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Transcript of Rebuilding the Plot
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Daniel Taghioff, MA Anthropology of Media103497, School of Oriental and African StudiesAugust 2004
I confirm that this dissertation consists of my own work, and that where the
work of others has been used, that it is referenced fully in the text.
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Daniel Taghioff, MA Anthropology of Media, School of Oriental and African Studies
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Id like to thank Donal Savage and Elizabeth Fitzgerald for giving me so muchhelp in West Hendon. Id like to thank Mark Hobart for giving me the benefit ofhis ruminations and Marjorie Mayo for her wise guidance. Id like to thankSabrina Fitzgerald, Rev. James Fullam, Fereidoon Mostowfei and Colin Parsonsfor being good sports and participating. Id like to thank Derek Chung forwelcoming me in, and helping me to understand. Id like to thank the DetachedYouth Team in West Hendon for their good humour and patience.
But most of all Id like to thank Olivia and Alva, just because.
ITA Independent Tenants AdvisorMWH Metropolitan West Hendon
RA Residents Association
Figure 1: Map of West Hendon 17Figure 2: Aerial Photograph of the Estate 18
Figure 3: Metropolitan West Hendon's most recent vision of the area 19Figure 4: Street scene 31Figure 5: Overview giving building heights, from the old master plan 32Figure 6: Overview from the new master plan 33
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Rebuilding the Plot: Participation in Regeneration?
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Contents
8
Urban Contextual Global: Isation towards a state. 8
Imagine there's no heaven. 10
States of Mediation 12
States of Development 13
So what does this mean for this study? 14
15
17
Some Basic Background to the Regeneration 17
Getting to know the regeneration 19
25
Composition of the group 25
Issues that emerged during the Focus Group 26Creating consensus 26Representation? 27History 28Density Description 30Difference 34
37
Discourse: More than just text and reception. 37
United States of Democracy? 38
Inconclusion 40
41
45
46
47
50
67
68
70
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Daniel Taghioff, MA Anthropology of Media, School of Oriental and African Studies
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One problem within Media Studies is conceptualising the subject in audience-
hood (Hobart, 1997.) This has lead to a consideration of how subjects are
constituted inter-textually, between discourses1 not only of and about the mass
media, but also in relation to other practices. The inadequacy of considering
subjects only or mainly as audiences has been thoroughly explored: In terms of
the ways that media organisations tend to construct audiences (Ang, 1991,) and in
terms of how audiences tend to contextualise and re-contextualise the messages
they receive (Fiske, 1991.) Work has been done to explore some of the
discursive practices that are often implicated in the ways that audiences
contextualise media messages (Morley, 2000) focussing on the social constructionof senses of home, belonging and identity.
These approaches are attempting to contextualise audience reception studies more
broadly and comprehensively. In Morleys case this is particularly in response to
what is portrayed by him as an overly liberal and de-politicised approach within
the active audience type debates (see Morley - criticising Fiske-, 1992 : 2629.)
He sees this as placing too much emphasis on the ability of audiences to re-
contextualise media output, leading to a perspective that tends to overlook the still
considerable influence that media output may have, especially when considered in
relation to other hegemonic discursive practices.
This can be seen as part of a general criticism of so called post-modern
approaches as being de-politicised, in the sense that they are not addressing
ongoing institutionalised practices that form persistent relations of power and
oppression (Torfing, 1999: 291.) This seems like a curious criticism, in that much
of Foucaults work attempted to deal with precisely these types of enduring
practices. Also one of the key influences on Stuart Halls encoding/decoding
1I need to make a clarification about terminology here. I use discourse and practice
somewhat interchangeably, in that I follow Laclau and Mouffes sense of their being noessential distinction between them (1985.). I use the words therefore to give emphasis ratherthan distinction. This does not mean that I consider them both meaningful in the sense of
fully containing the intention of their agent. Polysemy seems to abound in discourse-practice(Hobart, 1999a.) However I also do not see all things as equally, or utterly, polysemic. Whilst
polysemy is contingent on both sender and receiver that does not erase the possibility of
some of the senders intention being discernable in a discourse-practice, even if it is notultimately determinable.
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Daniel Taghioff, MA Anthropology of Media, School of Oriental and African Studies
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paper, and on Cultural Studies in general, has been the work of Ernesto Laclau
(Hobart, 2003: 18.) His work on articulation and discursive practices actually
emerged in relation to a consideration of the discursive construction of polity and
citizen, an inquiry into democratic practices and their subject positionings. This
seems to be an attempt to address ongoing practices, constitutive of what weconsider to be the social (Laclau, 1990.)
Within media studies Laclaus work has contributed to limiting the ways in which
people are pre-articulated theoretically, in order to allow inquiry into the ways in
which they themselves articulate their lives, and particularly their social
positioning. This has taken the form of criticism of the encoding/decoding model,
as relying on overly mechanical notions of social positioning, leading to an overly
mechanical sense of communication (see Reddy, 1979,) which obscures much of
the contingency and particularity of discursive responses to messages (Hobart,
2003.) But how can this sense of the contingency and particularity of discourse be
reconciled with a sense of enduring hegemonic practices?
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One way into this question might be to look at how audiences are influenced by
those practices implicated in the empty signifier of democracy, (Torfing, 1999:
248.) One example is the practices surrounding the idea of participation or
consultation in public decision making, hopefully involving those likely to be
affected by the outcomes (Abbot, 1996.) This study attempts to start to considerthese strands in relation to one another, by combining an ethnographic and
audience reception approach to studying the consultation process of an urban
regeneration project, in West Hendon in London. This seems to allow opportunity
to address these issues discursively, but also in relation to a more historical,
ethnographic and documentary, inquiry. This is aimed at allowing a sense of the
endurance of the discourses that seem to be influencing audience reception, in
relation to the particularity and contingency of their2 mobilisation, in and of the
discussions in a focus group setting.
Chapter 1 will critically consider a range of theorisation that seems relevant to the
study, in order to establish a theoretical explanation of using an audience
reception type of approach to study a consultation process. Chapter 2 will
review the methodological decisions I made during this work. Chapter 3 will
describe the ethnographic part of my work, giving an account of the lead-up to the
focus group, and my attempts to construct a balanced group. Chapter 4 will
describe the composition of the focus group, before discussing thematically the
issues emerging from it in relation to the ethnographic work and relevant
documentary sources. Chapter 5 is a discussion of some of the more general
implications of this work.
2The issue of agency in discourse is tricky, and makes talking about discourse tiresome. I broadly,
for now, settle for Morley's (1992: 59-72) conception of subjects in history interpolated byand interpolating subject positions in discourse . I see this as a non-dualistic model of agencythat acknowledges both the endurance and historicity of the subjective, whilst taking in theradical contingency of the discursive. Things can look very different within different
discussions, so objects are transformable (Bakhtin, 1986), historically/agentively produced(Laclau and Mouffe, 1985) and without necessary relation to the real,(Baudrillard, 1990.)This does not, however, erase a historical body-self as a continuity. I do not see a necessary
relation between positing continuity-memory (as a basis for active contextualisation) andessentialising a reified subject.
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Urban Contextual Global: Isation towards a state.
An examination of an urban regeneration project implies some reference to urbanSociology. One area that has been treated extensively within urban Sociology is
the relation between an individual and the urban context. Simmel's classic
article (1903) on The Metropolis and Mental Life, which has gone on to influence
contemporary urban Sociology, via its influence on the Chicago School, struggles
with the problem of if the metropolis builds up, or breaks down, the individual.
Such an inquiry must answer the question of how the personality
accommodates itself in the adjustment to external forces. (Simmel, 1903:20.)
So clearly this is a work based on the notion of an individual distinct from their
surroundings.
All intimate emotional relations between persons are founded on theirindividuality, whereas in rational relations man is reckoned with like anumber, like an element which is in itself indifferent. (Simmel, 1903: 20.)
Surely Simmel here is aware of two distinct ways of approaching the individual
and yet he turns to biology to try and reconcile the tension between them. He
argues that people are rendered physiologically blas by the mass of
impressions that the city present to their nervous system. He then argues that this
fits with the effects of the money economy, which makes all things exchangeable
for one another, and so flat and lacking in particularity. What is strange about this
is that he is describing how people are simultaneously shaped by internal and
external forces interacting with one another (is not the hustle of city life to a great
extent but an expression of the money economy?) However, he still insists on
maintaining the notion of the individual as causally distinct from the
surroundings. This seems to present barriers to an analysis of how people shape
their surroundings through their understanding of it, or, to mirror the dualism, of
how people at the same time are shaped by their surroundings, through their
understanding of it.
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In order to explore this problem further, I am treating what I have selected from
writing on urban Sociology (mainly from Dickens, 1990) as a discourse built
around two main elements:
1)The notion of processes tending towards equilibrium, some sort of climax orsteady state. This comes out explicitly in the Urban Ecology influences in
Chicago School thinking (Dickens, 1990: 32-34.) (For criticism of equilibrium
Ecology see Forsyth, 2003: 63-68.) It also can be seen in the Sociological
writing that, like Dickens, sees people tending towards a condition formed by
the (i.e. either locally or globally fixed and unitary) urban context. This
implies some sort of social equilibrium determined by some more or less fixed
underlying context. Writing on Globalisation often seems to posit the Global or
Modern as a determinable endpoint to the processes that they describe (e.g.
Giddens, 1997.) All these, more or less stable, notions of an equilibrium, are
what allows these writers to assume there is some sort of natural context to
which they can refer to, separate from the contextualising activities of those
involved.
2)A set of basic units that operate as the basis of exchange processes tending
towards, and working within, this imputed equilibrium state. These units areoften devoid of particular features, and pristine in their generalisability, and
thus exchangeability, with other objects expressed via these units. Examples
would include the constructions of individualism that correspond with Amely
Rorty's exposition of notions of the self as an accumulation of properties,
(1976.) Another example would include the notion of space, as place devoid
of particular content and thus amenable to commodification and exchange (See
Sacks, 1986.) Another example is a notion of human instinct. (See Dickens,
1990: p,) a notion that tends to be devoid of particularistic content, and mainly
used in the construction of a standard individual (an oxymoron, it seems to
me.)
There are problems that follow on from these elements:
1)This notion of a climax state tends to posit one specific, non-negotiable and
determining reality external to the agents involved. This brings the problem of
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a dualism between that which is natural, and that which is cultural or
socially produced. This becomes particularly acute in the ways in which the
notions of context and contextualisation, are respectively fixed or avoided.
2)The standardisation of these units tends, unsurprisingly, to mask theirparticularity. In the case of subjects/people/agents etc. This tends to bring
about a doubling of the subject (Foucault, 1970: 330-373.) There is a tension
between the notion of a unique individual (In Rorty's terminology)
conscience, as a point for the interpretation of principle, and the notion of a
standardised, rational and rationalising self (again by Rorty's scheme, 1976.)
In other words there seems to be irresolvable tension between the general and
particular in the construction of the notion of the individual, (Baumann,
1993: 44-47.) A tension that was found even in the earliest writings within the
liberal tradition (Winch, 1960.) This tension seems to arise from overlooking
the ways in which subjects (and objects for that matter) are continually
constituted and re-constituted discursively (Hobart, 1997.)
Imagine there's no heaven.
An issue that is picked up and runs as a theme throughout Dickenss Urban
Sociology is Giddens's idea of space-time distanciation i.e. that our lives, in a
modern and inter-connected world, are determined by events largely beyond our
face to face, or even mental, horizon. He posits this as leading to the increased
activation of a universal human instinct for ontological security i.e. for a control
and understanding of the contexts of our lives. What is interesting in this is that
he is basing his ideas on two basic units of exchangeability, space and time3.
Giddens, as expressed by Dickens, uses this to construct a notion of an
overarching human instinct that is explanatory of the human need for social order
and hierarchy (Dickens, 1990.)
However Giddens's ideas seem to mask as much as they reveal. The resort to
space and time distanciation mainly as a cause of a universalneed for social
3 There is not much evidence that time exists if one abandons the notion of non-
time i.e. the idea that things can ever stand still. In that light one could just as
well argue that we exist in one unending but ever-changing moment. So time, from
this perspective, seems like another way of dividing up our lives into standard
units amenable to exchange.
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order, excludes viewing it as an effectof the discursive aspects of globalisation. It
serves to mask the political processes that give rise to Globalisation i.e. national
and international processes of negotiation (see Stiglitz, 2002.) It is not surprising
that a view incorporating metaphors of splitting things down to basic, quantifiable
and exchangeable units, might mask the very particular, qualitative andsynthesising discursive forces that would seem to shape events at all scales.
Giddens's framework seems well suited to masking the discursive aspects of
power.
The account then leads to a universal instinct that all individuals share. This
seems like a nice way to explain the social order as being natural, in the absence
of any explanation of how it is actively and discursively constituted. What is
missed out is an explanation of how a general need for order is translated into the
myriad of specific practices that make up people's lives. The blunt notion of
instinct is used to easily explain away how people come to understand their own
needs. Clearly they don't necessarily do this as individuals, and they don't do this
in isolation from their environments, or contexts, or in isolation from how these
are represented to them, by themselves and others.
It is interesting that Giddenss work on Globalisation stands in contrast to hiswork at a more local level, in his ideas around structuration. Here the actions of
actors and their qualitative discussions are seen as significant, and so worthy of
scrutiny, rather than taken as an a priori reality (Bogason, 2000: 93 100.) This
seems to lead to a pan-optical structure in Giddens's work, where those whose
discussions affect the way things are done globally are immune from scrutiny,
shielded behind an ontological need for some sort of overall equilibrium or state
of reality. But the rest of us are subject to scrutiny. His ideas of structuration
reproduce the sense of an overall background reality, by positing structure as
something distinct from agency (Hobart, 1999b.) This again seems to defend
some sort of ontological status quo, whilst, somewhat pan-optically, diverting
attention away from strategically active agents constitutive of that status quo, and
towards the analysis of agency in relation to more immediate constraints.
This is a particularly pressing point when considering local participation in a
regeneration process. The differences encountered are precisely negotiations over
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Daniel Taghioff, MA Anthropology of Media, School of Oriental and African Studies
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people's needs for secure and familiar homes, and the ways in which these needs
are negotiated as part of a highly politicised process. It is precisely these sorts of
negotiations of what, for instance, security and familiarity mean that are at stake.
What the future reality, or ontology, will be, once it has been produced via these
discursive processes, is also at stake. In other words almost the entirety of thelocal context is part of the negotiation, so an approach that takes a form of
equilibrium, or type of context, as given, obscures important issues: How is the
regeneration process contextualised by local people, and how is it being
contextualised to them, by others?
States of Mediation
The issue of active contextualisation also causes problems within the study of the
Media. The division between an individual and a sense of their environment, as a
given background state separate from their actions or interpretations, can be found
in models of communication that are current within Media Studies. One example
is Stuart Hall's Encoding-Decoding model, which is built around a notion of codes
determined by a fairly singular contextualisation of what social positioning is.
Morley examines the problem of a notion of positioning being viewed as
distinct from the discursive processes they are supposed to influence. He points
out that audiences will respond to messages by mobilising codes based on
historical and current articulation of their positioning. They are not, in this view,
isolated from outside articulations of their positioning, and their sense of their
positioning is contingent on discursive processes. This is not to say that there is
necessarily no relation between positioning and the interpretation of messages, or
the types of interpretive resources available. Nor is it to say that people face total
freedom of meaning and interpretation in relation to their life situation. But the
ways in which people interpret their own positioning confounds any simplistic
determinate model of class and other social / structural categorisations, and thus
the types of reading people will make of messages. Morley makes this case in
his Nationwide study (which employs a focus group methodology,) with the
differences in responses between more oppositional shop stewards, and more
accommodative union officials. Despite both groups explicitly being members of
the same class for themselves, these two groups diverged in their
interpretations, due to the specific circumstances of their lives and occupations
(1992). Thus the various and contingent ways in which people actively
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contextualise their own positioning is significant in any study of audiences.
States of Development
One area where people's articulation of their own positioning has taken on
significance is in debates on Development, especially around participation andempowerment. Approaches such as participatory rural appraisal are aimed at
helping people to articulate their own resource positioning. This takes place
within a type of focus group or group interview setting, to generate a context for
discussions of community needs. Mosse points out that this assumption of
community can be manipulated to construct the outcomes of participation,
either by facilitators working towards organisational priorities, or through the
manipulation of public discourse by elite groups within the communities
concerned. Thus an uncritical contextualisation of participation, as occurring
within communal consensus, can lead to such processes becoming less than
participatory for many of those involved. This is especially so for those whose
interests may be less likely to be articulated in public (e.g. women.) A more
dynamic (less state-like) and more antagonistic view of communal life, might
lead on towards a more careful consideration of the various interests that may be
in play in the situation. This might sensitise enquiry to the various
contextualisations that may, therefore, be involved.
John Abbot's Sharing the City attempts to address the issue of participatory
processes taking place in a variety of contexts, and the implication of a need for a
variety of approaches to participation. He, is in a sense, reaching towards a sense
of Participation as an empty signifier i.e. that it is useful, discursively, in terms of
its non-specific reference to an ideal (Torfing, 1999: 282.) However he opts to set
up a classification of different contexts, portrayed as determining which type of
participation would be appropriate. This seems to embody some valuable
experience of what has and has not worked in various situations. However, he
seems to universalise in a way that blocks any sense of the contextualisation of
participation by those involved in participation.
Surely a large part of any participation is precisely a negotiation of what the
context of the participation is. Development savvy Governments, for instance, are
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likely to want to portray themselves as being open to participation, especially in
response to recent development agendas on Good Governance. (Stiglitz, 2002.)
This may well be an issue within the context of UK planning policy, where the
question has been raised: Why the great emphasis on public participation in
planning policy, when so little attention is paid to the views of the people who doparticipate? (See Abram, 2001: 185.)
So what does this mean for this study?
It would be tempting here to try and analyse this process based on the preceding
criticism of Giddens's discourses on globalisation, so influential in Dickens
overview of urban Sociology. Indeed the ex-nomination of the influence of neo-
liberal discourses, within the decision-making related to governance, seems like a
valid position from which to critically analyse the discourses found around urban
regeneration (see for instance Taylor, 2002.) Unfortunately, for the purposes of
this study, this does not realise the goal of investigating how the people involved
contextualise their situation. Also, such global influences have to operate via
specific discursive threads within the situation anyway, so it seems to me to be
more fruitful to examine the various types of discourses mobilised and mobilising
in relation to the regeneration's consultation project, and only then to reflect on
what implications this might have for more general discussions.
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I approached this research with a focus group methodology in mind. This was
due partly to the types of theoretical reflections given before. A focus group is a
useful methodology, as it allows the researcher some insight into the discussions
that go on between members of an audience, (Morley, 1992: 97.) Focus group
research has also found favour in studies of the social construction of space, in
relation to the ways in which people make consumption choices (Holbrook &
Jackson, 1996.)
I lived for the year in West Hendon. My first key informant, Donal Savage, has
lived in the area for three years, and first suggested the possibility of the study to
me. My second key informant, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, helped me to assemble a
focus group. She is active in the Resident's Association (RA), which is engaged
in negotiation with the company running the regeneration, Metropolitan West
Hendon (MWH.) I used a snowballing methodology in putting together my focus
group, as recommended to me by Professor Marjorie Mayo at Goldsmith's. She
pointed out that looking for participants in a non face-to-face manner was unlikely
to produce a good response rate in this type of study. I simply did not have the
resources available for random sampling (Bryman, 2001.) I attempted some level
of external validation or rather triangulation of the responses from the focus
group by following up documentary sources. I focussed on documentary sources
that might indicate what sorts of discourses were in play around the
regeneration, sources such as the Urban Regeneration Handbook (Roberts and
Sykes, 2000,) MWH's own publicity material (Metropolitan West Hendon, 2003,)
the local press (appendix 7) and correspondence from the local MP (appendix 6.)
I also triangulated the focus group with the various meetings and discussions I
encountered during my ethnographic work. I adopted this approach to avoid
fixating on one text as the main determinant of the discursive formation and
rather to look at inter-textuality, or the various discourses in play in the situation,
and what I could glean of their (see footnote 2 in the introduction,) interplay.
Whilst I obtained informed consent from thoseparticipatingin the research for
what I have included here, I was unable to devote time to going through sections
of the final text with them to check my interpretation against theirs, nor am I sure
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they would have had the time and goodwill to devote to this.
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Some Basic Background to the Regeneration
Figure 1: Map of West Hendon. Source: www.multimap.com
The map above (figure 1) gives a sense of West Hendon Broadway. The estate,
which is going to be knocked down and rebuilt, is between the Broadway, which
will be partially demolished and remodelled for traffic flow purposes, and the
Welsh Harp, a reservoir that serves as a leisure and wildlife spot in the area. Oak
Lane frames it at the southern end. See figure 2 below for an aerial photograph of
the area, to give more of a sense of the scale of the project. The image below that
(figure 3,page 19) gives the planned layout of the estate, according to the
regeneration body. (The arrow in the top-right indicates north.)
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Figure 2: Aerial Photograph of the Estate, Source www.multimap.com
The estate is going to go from around 650 homes to over triple that number,
although this final figure has been the subject of quite some discussion. The
building work is due to take place after the planning applications are complete,
and is broadly scheduled between 2006 and 2014, subject to completion of the
negotiations around the planning application and the types of timing problems
often associated with such projects. The West Hendon regeneration is one of fourregeneration projects going on in the borough of Barnet, with others in
Stonegrove, Graham Park and Dollis Valley. I would like to leave my account of
the background here, to try to avoid pre-interpreting the situation too much.
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Figure 3: Metropolitan West Hendon's most recent vision of the area (August2004.)
Source: Metropolitan West Hendon's website.
Getting to know the regeneration
I started by attending a meeting for traffic planning on the 29th of October 2003
(incidentally 5 nights after Diwali and the 3rd day of Ramadan, in an area with
both a Hindu Mandir and a Mosque on the Broadway.) The meeting was at 215
West Hendon Broadway, which is the main information distribution point for the
regeneration team, as they term themselves. The meeting was to present a
computer simulation, to show how traffic flow would be improved by the building
work. What struck me about those turning up was that they were all white and allseemed over 50 years old (Donal (35) and I (28) felt somewhat out of place.) The
computer model, presented by external traffic consultants, at first seemed to
inspire awe in those present. It was presented as factual and thus seemed hard
to question. A discussion ensued, where it emerged that this was a model for
morning traffic. When I asked about evening traffic, the consultants admitted that
they had no model for this, but that it would be about the same but in the
opposite direction. At this point a discussion ensued, where residents challenged
as to if the system would be able to deal with future increases in traffic numbers
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etc. Discussing this afterwards, Donal and I were shocked at the profile of those
attending (perhaps people working don't have the time or energy, perhaps non-
British people feel excluded,) and at the impression that the traffic model had
been produced mainly for presentation purposes, as it had not been produced very
thoroughly, covering all times of the day.
I went to see Derek Chung on the afternoon of the 20th of July. He is one of the
two most active members on the RA, I had seen one of his newsletters up in the
window of the community centre on the estate. He welcomed me in, and we sat in
his living room as he explained to me his responses to the regeneration process.
He explained to me that initially the density of housing had been 2500 homes and
that this had been reduced to around 2100 when the first planning application hadbeen rejected. He pointed out that some of the residents had been living in their
houses for 32 years, and as such they had made a major financial and emotional
investment in their homes. He then started to explain some of the conflicts over
the design of the new homes. He pointed out that the initial proposal for window
sizes and room sizes would have reduced them considerably, and that he was
fighting to keep them the same as they had been. He pointed out that the houses
were currently very pleasant inside, and that the residents weren't willing to have
worse, after they had moved. He raised the issue of the shape of the rooms: Even
if the floor space remained the same, a change of shape in room meant that the
new home would be unsuitable, that it wouldn't fit the residents. He used the
image of trousers being the wrong shape, of having one long leg instead of two
shorter ones. I was surprised by how nice the homes were once you were inside
them, in contrast with my initial pre-conception of the estate as being run-down
and poor. This sample of one seems to support the need for a discussion of how
areas are constructed as problem areas and who exactly goes about doing that.
Derek also pointed out that the regeneration process had been much less
consensual than MWH and the council had been presenting it as. He said that
when the original plan, for all four regeneration projects within Barnet, had been
placed before the council, the vote had been split evenly down the middle, five
councillors for and five against. The Chairman gave the casting vote for the
regeneration. He was also suspicious of the voting process, pointing out that
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employees of the council or MWH went around following up the polling. He felt
that they coached people as to how they should respond and that the project was
sold to people: As he put it, If you offer a child a stick of Broccoli or an Ice
Cream, what are they going to choose? He felt that residents hadn't been very
well informed about the project, and I assume that this is why he uses themetaphor of a child.
He mentioned that the decanting meetings had been put off. These were
meetings to discuss the issue of how residents were to be re-housed during the
building work, and then moved back into properties on the estate once building
work was completed. He then discussed the issue of the way in which the
planning process worked. Residents were required to vote on proposals that werevery vague, and then had much less power to negotiate once the proposals had
been accepted. I read this to mean that there was a perceived general tendency
towards deferral and vagueness on behalf of MWH, and that this was perceived as
disempowering for the RA.
I went on to Interview Elizabeth Fitzgerald, also on July 20th
. She seems to be the
other person most active in the RA alongside Derek. She explained how the she
had held MWH to account over the size of the public spaces in the area, that theywere below certain legal minimum standards. She also explained that she had
held them to account over the Welsh Harp being a site of special scientific
interest, and that this meant that they could not build anything within 60 feet of
the water. The overall impression she gave me was that opposition and scrutiny
from the RA had been necessary to keep MWH within minimum legal boundaries,
and that, by implication, MWH had not been pro-active about it's own
compliance.
I had realised by this time that the main issue I was facing in terms of putting
together a focus group was not so much ethnic representation, but issues of gender
and age, alongside where people lived, and the ways in which they already
belonged to existing political affiliations in relation to the regeneration. Since I
had encountered mainly middle-aged men in my initial work, I decided to ask
Elizabeth, rather than Derek, to participate in the focus group. I also discussed
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this problem with her, and she said she might know younger people, or people that
wereforthe regeneration who might be able to help, drawn from on the estate.
Elizabeth, acting now as one of my key informants, introduced me to her
daughter, Sabrina Fitzgerald, whilst I was playing at a community cricket match
put on by the Detached Youth Team, as part of the summer programme for kidson the estate. Whilst I was wary of my group being completely colonised by
people connected to Elizabeth, I also had to acknowledge that Sabrina, as a
younger woman in the process of completing her law qualifications with work
experience at the Crown Prosecution Service, was likely to have a differing set of
perspectives and priorities from the others in the group, and so would help to
round it out as a sample.
Elizabeth also invited me to a meeting between the four RAs, of the four
regeneration sites in Barnet. I met Elizabeth on the 26th of July to go to this
meeting. We met Derek and a man called Colin Parsons, to share a car to the
meeting. Elizabeth had explained that Colin was a leaseholder on the Estate, and
so would give another perspective on the regeneration, due to his different
ownership position. I was again wary of the group being taken over by a clique,
but had to acknowledge that his would be an interesting perspective to have. So I
introduced myself and my work. During the car journey to the meeting, Colin
explained to me some of the historical background to the regeneration, as he saw
it. He pointed out the long history of selling off council housing in this country,
and explained that he saw the regeneration as an extension of this, a further
strategy for getting rid of social housing. A discussion opened up within the car,
and it seemed that Elizabeth and Derek were also worried that the social housing
tenants would not have secure tenancies in the long run: That the trend would be
to turn all the properties over to housing association type arrangements. There was
a concern about a lack of information about the tenancies on offer, about the
possibility of children inheriting these tenancies (some of this information is
available on MWHs website, although not in any great detail,) about the
proportion of social housing to private housing to be built, the level of provision
of housing to key workers and about the overall costing of the project: Where
would all the money from the sale of private housing go? They pointed out that
the whole project was based on what they saw as a gift of public land from the
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council to a private housing association, which was likely to basically operate as a
property developer. They expressed scepticism about MWH's stated ethos.
We arrived at the meeting slightly late, and I was introduced as a student doing
research on the regeneration. The meeting was the first of its kind and was chaired
by a consultant. There were nine residents and four Independent Tenants Advisors
(ITAs - consultants) present. As the meeting progressed the issue of the density of
dwellings and space standards emerged as a major area of concern. The ITAs
pointed out that there was a variety of different standards that might be applicable,
like the Mayor's plan for London, Barnets Unitary Development Plan, the
Housing Corporation standards and the Parker Morris standards (Morris, 1961.) It
seemed that most of the residents were, at best, only partially aware of thesestandards. The lack of one clear standard was cited as an issue by the ITAs.
It then emerged that each of the RAs was required to negotiate with their
respective regeneration authorities individually. This meant that each RA had
negotiated a different space standard for their estate. Some of them had
negotiated, with considerable support from their ITA, to get space at the highest
standard (Parker Morris) plus 10 %. By contrast the West Hendon RA was
struggling to make sure that their development conformed to minimum legal
standards on space and density. This issue seemed compounded by the lack of a
common standard, and by the residents being unaware of the relevant standards
and how they might access them. I had to go to the LSE library, to a rolling stack
in the lower ground floor and climb up a step-ladder to find a dusty government
publication to access a copy of the Parker Morris standards they are noteasily
available on the internet. I passed a copy of the Parker Morris standards on to
Elizabeth. Another issue was that it was difficult for tenants to evaluate the
regeneration schemes when they did not have access to accounts of how funds
would be allocated within the scheme. This stymied any discussion of if the
schemes would be providing social or key worker housing, or would be more
oriented as a private property development. These were concerns shared between
the RAs. I was disturbed that provision of these types of information was not an
integral part of the consultation process. I raised the issue of the individualised
approach to negotiating with one of the ITAs, (after the meeting was finished) and
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was informed that this was indeed a long term problem, and that Marilyn Taylor
had written on these types of issues (2002.)
On the way back in the car, Elizabeth brought up one of the other issues raised in
the meeting: That MWH had made a pledge to residents when they were asked to
vote for or against their regeneration proposal. That pledge was for bigger, better
homes. She maintained that it was a struggle to hold MWH to that pledge, to
even keep the homes at the same size as previously, mirroring what Derek had
expressed earlier. She did not see how homes were really going to be better
when the density of housing was going to increase so much.
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Composition of the group
Appendix 2 gives a slightly fuller profile of those that participated in the focusgroup. I had Elizabeth and Colin, both involved in the RA, but with Colin as a
leaseholder whilst Elizabeth was a council tenant. Then Sabrina, Elizabeth's
daughter, lived on the estate with Elizabeth, but was reported by Elizabeth as
beingforthe regeneration in as much as she saw the need for extra housing for
young people, being provided on the private market. There was also Fereidoon
Mostowfei, who is Iranian and runs a drycleaners on the Broadway, and so was
somewhat representative of business interests in the area. Finally there was Father
James Fullam, the Catholic priest from the Church on the Broadway, another
resident, living next to the Church, but not on the estate. I attempted to contact
other faith groups, but either failed to work out they existed in the area, or failed
to contact a representative, or to persuade them to participate.
The focus group took place in the Corner Cafe on the Broadway, at 7.00 p.m. I
recorded and transcribed the interaction, which was initially focussed around a
page from the MWH website (see appendix 3.) This was a loose focus, and the
question I asked was how did they feel about the way in which they had been
consulted with by MWH. The interaction took on a dynamic of it's own, guided
somewhat by my interventions (D=), which are shown in the transcript, (see
appendix 4: Each contribution to the focus group is numbered: e.g. (56), in
chronological order, for the sake of easy reference. The contributions are also
coded with the first initial of the participants: e.g. J=) I will not go through the
transcript chronologically, but will pick out what I see as the major themes.
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Issues that emerged during the Focus Group
Creating consensus
(2) J = They told me that the voting was,,, overwhelming,, uh in favourof,, uh the regeneration.
Father James begins by saying, in the context of having been visited by local
councillors, that it was put to him how strongly people had voted in favour of the
scheme. This mirrors my experience of MWH representatives and also of what
appears in their publicity materials, namely that there was a 62% turnout for the
vote (from estate residents) and that 75% were in favour (MWH, 2003.) Indeed
from the Urban Regeneration Handbookthefirstcriterion for a successful
strategic partnership is:
A strategic vision and framework, providing a clear picture of the desiredoutcomes, encourages partners to align their goals and objectives whilemaking appropriate contributions. Partnerships should be built on sharedinterests, joint understanding and action. (Carter, 2000: 56,)
It seems there is a strong emphasis here on legitimating the regeneration process
as consensual, and in laying down a strategic framework early on. However
Derek's comments, about the way the project wassoldto residents, problematise
this. Furthermore Sabrina's comments:
(119)S= And, I think that's all sort of, it's all, kind of lip-service, it's it'ssaying it's gonna be great, it's gonna be great, but it's, it's selling an idea,that, without actually really going into detail, without really...
So there is a sense of the consensus for the project being produced (or rather
seduced, Baudrilard, 1990,) through a technique of selling the project, without
giving any detail of what it will involve. This seems to be an ongoing issue in the
relation between the RAs and MWH. Sabrina recounts ((14) in the transcript) how
MWH seemed the least prepared during the exhibition when bidding alongside
two other companies. Her impression of them was of making vague promises
about the future without going in to any detail.
Fereidoon confirms this tendency towards vagueness when he points out that
business people on the high street were unclear if their premises were to be
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knocked down (190 & 194.) Elizabeth also explained earlier that she only got
involved when she was told that her street, Ramsey Close, was going to be
knocked down, after having been assured that it would not be (Sabrina reiterates
this see 196.) It seems clear that it is difficult for the resident's to have known
what they were voting for, when so many changes to the project kept happeningalong the way, and what information they do get is perceived as being very vague.
Colin sees this vagueness as a strategy of sorts:
(153)C= The detailed applica, the details, the intricate details will comewhen they've been given permission to do what they want, so it's
basically you are now stuck with whatever project we've got,
This issue seems particularly pressing in relation to the pledge that was given to
residents, which was the basis on which the vote was made. Elizabeth was upset,
as she had indicated before, that MWH did not seem to be keeping to the terms of
the pledge (130.) This supports what Derek reported about the difficult
negotiations currently under way about what bigger and better might mean, in
terms of room size, shape and window sizes, and also Elizabeth's earlier concerns
about outside spaces.
This issue extended into the meeting between the four RAs. It seems strange that
there should be no common standards by which Resident's Associations could
negotiate, no process from the outset for resident's associations to come together,
share information and form a common position. Derek maintained that the
meeting happened because he and other RAs called for it. There seem to be no
systems in place to ensure the residents have ready access to all the information
and standards relevant to the consultation process, from the very start.
Representation?
An obvious response to this criticism is that the RAs are there to make sure that
the vision continues to include resident's interests, since a full consultation is
taking place and resident's are being included at every stage. Indeed the Urban
Regeneration Handbook states as the lastcriterion of a successful partnership:
Partnerships should involve local residents and community organisationsas equal partners. This often requires a change in culture and way ofoperating to accommodate community participants. The involvement of
these groups is necessary to ensure their full commitment to achieving the
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jointly established goals and to ensure that they are the principlebeneficiaries of whatever action is taken. (Carter, 2000: 56)
But Elizabeth's perception of the process is slightly different:
(123)E= They've set up these groups for the residents to go to and theplanning and design group, supposed to mean we're in on the planning,euuh the management, and this regeneration group, but we had a bigargument with them in that they take minutes, but they never write in theminutes our objections or our concerns...
Now clearly one criticism possibly levelled at those active in the RAs is that they
are not representative of the bulk of opinion on the estate: Indeed the way in
which the vote has become such a focus of antagonism seems to reflect this.
However, this does not really answer the question of how the RAs can operate as
equal partners. If they are meant to represent the estates, then surely there should
also have been a vote for them. Otherwise there is an imbalance of legitimacy
between proposals seen as having an official mandate, and RAs seen as not. If no
election is held, then it seems that for a meaningful consultation to be carried out,
the views of the resident's representatives need to be taken at face value, and
actively kept on the record as much as is possible. From this point of view,
accusing the RAs of not being representative is pretty close to admitting that the
consultation has not been managed properly.
Sabrina presented another way of looking at this problem:
(107)S= I think what you were saying about the consultation, uuhm, mysort of impression is that, I think if they could get away with it they
probably wouldn't have consulted anyone. I think that the only reason thatthe tenants are involved as they are to a limited extent,
(108)D= right,
(109)S= Is because, they have to, because they're the people, well notnecessarily the tenants, but say for example the freeholders who, the needto have compulsory purchase orders, so they have to have these peopleinvolved, and they feel obliged, I think that the Metropolitan feel obligedto involve them, but if they could get away with it then, they probably,wouldn't.
History
Colin, as someone who has lived on the estate for 20 years and who has had a
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features. What is looked at is an image, a vision rather than an unfolding drama,
and thus is compatible with a notion of a static consensus, rather than with a sense
of an ongoing consultation where things are genuinely up for renegotiation. The
other feature is that this metaphor is ultimately all about the future, and seems to
de-emphasise history, or learning lessons from the past. Another feature of theliterature is how everything is portrayed as new, exciting, and unique, not
exactly encouraging comparison with, and learning from, what has gone before
(See appendix 5 for an example of this kind of text.)
The issue of local residents not having the support or information they require for
operating within arenas of public consultation is not a new one for Barnet. The
effectiveness of the public inquiry into the Barnet Unitary Development Plan, of1990, was called into question for precisely this. A lack of understanding of the
details of planning procedures and standards meant that the inspector felt he
needed to take a very active role in scrutinising the plan, since residents were not
put in a position to do so (Webster and Lavers, 1991 : 805 806.) This issue has
also been phrased in terms of the issue of learning planning speak (Abrame,
2001: 193-196.) This could be seen as an issue of expertise, but from what I have
encountered it also seems to be an issue of basic information simply not being
available, never mind actively provided.
Density Description
(171) S= ...I think, sorry... I think that's one of the things about, I mean,when you say looking at their website and the pictures, I mean they, theylook very attractive, it looks like an area of maybe the city or somewhere
that you know like young London, somewhere that I'd probably like to live,but I think part of it is, uuh part of what doesn't come across from thegraphics is how dense it's actually going to be, I mean at the moment there'swhat 560 homes on the estate and they're going to increase it to, is it 2000?
(172) E= 680 at the moment, to two thousand
(173) J in background
(174) S= I mean at the moment it's quite dense as it is, so I mean to havethat many new homes in that one area, it doesn't, I don't think that comesacross here
(175) E= ...The traffic...
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(176) S= ...And I think the first time that I got that was from the model, theplan,
(177 ) D= Right
(178) S= It's what was it made out of? The proper
(179) E= Wood
(180) S= You now like the plans
(181) D= Scale model sort of thing
(182) S= Yeah, one of those, then when you look at that in comparison tothe, to the, the houses on the Broadway that are going to remain that yourealise the actual scale of the development,
Sabrina seems to be making a point of media criticism. She is, in part, referring
specifically to the colour printout of a webpage from the MWH site that I had
provided as a prompt (see appendix 3,) one of the images from which is
reproduced below:
Figure 4: Street scene. Source: Metropolitan West Hendons website.
This is the most dense looking image from that page, as far as I can see. It is
clear that the whiting out of the buildings in the background, and the focus on the
blue of the sky and the green of the trees minimises the sense of density and
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maximises the sense of space or naturalness.
In a document I obtained when I went to the first meeting about the traffic
planning (Metropolitan West Hendon, 2003.) there is an overview of the site,
based on the old master plan that failed its planning application. (According to
Elizabeth this was due partly to high-rise buildings being placed too close to the
Welsh Harp.) It gave an overview of the area including information about
building heights:
Figure 5: Overview giving building heights, from the old master plan.
Source: Metropolitan West Hendon, 2003.
As Mark Hobart pointed out to me, the height here is represented as being warm
and cosy by being in red tones: A communal feeling perhaps. But what is also
interesting is that this type of height data is not easy to find now on the MWH
website. Here is an example of the type of overview given there, for the revised
master plan:
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Figure 6: Overview from the new master plan. Source: Metropolitan WestHendons Website.
Another overview is given (see figure 3 ) with some shadows on it, hinting at
building heights, but there is no direct indication of building heights mapped out
on the site. It seems that there is not even a thin description of density present on
the website, and thus no clear publicity on building heights for the new master
plan. This information is highly significant to lease-holding residents on theestate:
(313)E= Isn't there some reason you can't get a mortgage for a council placeover the 5th or 4th floor?
(314)C= You can't get it over, if the building's more than five stories high thenyou cannot get a mortgage for it,
(315)E= Even if you're only on the fourth say,
(316)C= Doesn't matter cos you're in a building, that's what I pointed out tothem,
(317)E= And they're all above that?
(318)C= There are some which are only four stories high, said to them I wantone which is four stories high or I go on the ground, I am not going in a
building which is five stories high.
(319)E= Have you got any guarantee that you will get a...
(320)C= I will make sure that I do notend up in a higher building.
(321)E= Well you have to or you won't get a mortgage out.
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Difference
I had been concerned that an overriding consensus had been reached in the group,
due to three of the participants (Elizabeth, Colin, Sabrina) being involved in, or
related to, the RA. However, when I announced the end of the focus group, and
the freeing of the formal context, an interesting discussion began:
(334) E= Well the council should be able to get money to re, even torebuild what is here. It's just a money making thing. It's all for profit.
(335)S= I'm not against it.
(336)E= Oh well nobody's againstit that being knocked and rebuilt, theover development people are against.
(337)S= Uhm, wellpersonally, from my point of view, I'm living inLondon and I know it's going to be over developed and I know that it's a
big city and I just want somewhere, kind of, if it's going to attract morepeople into the area, if it's going to bring the area up, if it's somewherewhere my friends will say oh what d'you live in West Hendon, (E in
background) that's like a real nice area...
(338)F= I think that's what's gonna happen.
(339)S= Well that's, from my point of view being...
(340)F= Injecting 2000 people in this area means more work, (S+E
object in background) you have to think it this way,
(341)S= I just don't...
(342)F= This is what I think, injecting more money to the area, thatbrings the work, more people is going to be in this area, morecosmopolitan as they explained it...
(343)S= ...Yeah...
(344)F= Yeah? So more shops,
Suddenly Sabrina and Fereidoon 's differing interests begin to be expressed more
strongly. The first thing that this seems to illustrate is that my normative influence
within the group, as controlling an interview context, had suppressed difference of
opinion, which emerged when the interview was over (the participants gave me
permission to use this material.) From this it seems likely that a regeneration /
consultation model that attempts to set up a strong consensus from the beginning
(I had actively encouraged them to express differences in opinion at the beginning
and throughout the interview) is very likely to lead to the masking of differences
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of opinion. The stress within MWH's publicity material on the community, as if
it were one entity, would only serve to accentuate this, perhaps mirroring the
problems encountered in participation in development in an international setting
(Mosse, 2001.) My experience of who it was that participated in MWH's open
meetings only reinforced this impression.
Fereidoon and Sabrina are not dissenting with what is going to happen: That more
affluent people will move into the area, perhaps also pushing prices up (see 227.)
They are pointing out that, from where they are standing, this is not necessarily a
bad thing, for instance because it will stimulate business or result in new places to
go out and spend time (381,399.) However, for Sabrina this evaluation is very
contingent on detailed information about what these outcomes might be:
(233)S= ...Yeah, affordable accommodation it'll be somewhere get my
foot on the property ladder maybe being a resident here will have the
opportunity to, I don't know, maybe have first call or whatever and the
idea of the area coming up as well like maybe get like I dont know a lot
of people object to to it but from my point of view like some trendy bars
or some like like you know kind of more sort of going out like area I,
that was what I was quite excited about but I think that's what it was
initially but now it just looks like there's no way I'd ever be able to
afford one of them on the private market and it's just, it's targeting a
completely different sort of idea of what...
So even for those residents that feel that they have a lot to gain from the
regeneration, this is only likely to be meaningful for them if there is some
financial detail provided about how much the new properties are likely to cost,
and what proportion of them will be social housing, key worker housing,
supported by housing association phased ownership schemes etc. This mirrors the
concerns raised in the meeting of the four RAs about a lack of financial
information about the regeneration proposals.
Fereidoon gives an indication of the political will behind the regeneration on the
part of the council, in the context of his application for a restaurant license:
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(386) F= They're gonna have more coffee shop this and that, otherwise toget an A3 license for a shop like that... (S breaks in) ... I tried it in Camden,its a nightmare.
(387) S= ...When you applied for this, did you have to change the land use,did you have to change it to an A3 use?
(388) F= Yes.
(389) S= You did, so because normally there is lots of objections to thatkind of thing, but they encourage that you're saying...
(390)F= Yes. It was very easy,
(391) E= Yeah.
(392) F= If you wanted to do it in Camden you had to go to one of thesefirms, specifically applying for these things, and you pay them thousands of
pounds.
(393) S= ...Because Camden's.
(394) F=...And I managed to get it myself.
(395) F= It was very easy. I knew it, this part is not going to be affected, butthere is the willingness.
(396) E= Yeah.
(397) F= With the council, that this area should be injected with morepeople, so they need more things.
Donal, in his own commentary on what is going on, pointed out that Barnet has a
conservative council and a Labour MP, and that the conservative council would
not be upset if more affluent voters moved into the borough. The MP had sent a
letter to constituents, detailing his concerns about the consultation process (see
Appendix 6.) In addition there had been a certain amount of confrontation
between one of the main Councillors pushing for the regeneration (Brian
Sallinger, Conservative) and Mr Dismore, reported in the Local Barnet Times (see
Appendix 7.)
It would seem from all of this that differences of interest are very much driving
the regeneration process, and that local people are very much aware of this. This
means that a consultation model that is formed around the idea of an early fixed
consensus or vision, and a unitary sense of the community is unlikely to draw
people in, or make them feel that the issues that they see as important are being
addressed.
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Discourse: More than just text and reception.
In this study the social construction of space is addressed in relation to practices
of mediation. What is interesting within this is that the subjectivities of home are
precisely what are disarticulated in this public discussion of the social
construction of space. The subjectivity of residents is obscured behind public
discourses on the quantity of floor space and so on. This raises the question: Is
Media Studies, by focussing on the private aspect of the subjectivity of home,
not in danger of reproducing an a priori liberal division between the private and
the public. But surely one major aspect of what is so interesting about non-
face-to-face practices (i.e. of mediation, where people dont see eye-to-eye, as it
were,) is that they cross this division in so many ways, (Morley, I must note, is
well aware of this, see 1992: 270-289.)
It is always possible to ask, when faced with the bewildering complexities of
discourse theory, what difference does it make? Apart from the irony of
discourse theory being precisely about the production of similarities and
differences, this seems like a very searching question. One way of putting asimilar criticism is to ask we may talk about it in this way, but does that mean we
actually do it in this way? Now discourse theorists can protest that it is precisely
that gap between text and practise that discourse inhabits. But they are hampered
in this if they focus mainly on the linguistic or textual aspects of discourse. Now
this is a strong argument for an ethnographic approach to discursive practices, but
what is at stake here?
One clue comes from the study of discourse within organisations. Organisational
studies being, to a large extent, about getting things done collectively, has seen a
negative response to what is portrayed as nominalism in discourse theory (Reed,
2000,) of reality being seen as defined by what you call things. However, the
response to this charge is fairly robust, in as much as discourse and organisation
itself can be portrayed as synonymous (Chia, 2000.) How can people operate to
get things done collectively without forms of collectively institutionalised
discourse? This conflict seems to focus debate on those features of discourse that
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are constitutive of the possibility of action in a particular situation. These are
precisely the features of discourse that are less prone to the charge of nominalism,
in that they are precisely the features of discourse that tend to be performative i.e.
that are constitutive of what is possible and thus real.4
This opens up a set of questions for Media Studies that I cannot adequately trace
out in full here, but perhaps I can illustrate with an example. Out of Bounds is a
book about the mediation of sports (Baker and Boyd, 1997.) The book is
contextualised in the introduction, in terms of sports being a discursive
compliment to enterprise, a drama within which can be articulated the values of
competition, teamwork, sportsmanship, drive to succeed etc. But what is not
included, is study of how, or if, these discourses are put into play in the
workplace: To look at if they become incorporated into the discursive practices of
enterprise. Now clearly this would need to be an ethnographic study, to try and
approach the specificities of how these discourses might be mobilised and
mobilising. Now whilst not, by strict definitions, a Media Studies piece of work,
it would clearly be a means of following through on what the reception of
mediation means in practice.
United States of Democracy?
Is a sense of an underlying realism, or state (or globality, Giddens, 1997)
leading to a notion of convergence in understanding through communication
(Habermas, 1987,) towards some state of consensus or unity, really compatible
with notions of democracy? Is democracy not tied to the pluralistic notion that
there are many valid ways of approaching the world, and that these all need to be
admissible into discussion? (Torfing , on Mouffes conception of pluraldemocracy, 1999: 252-255.) Once a consensus is formed and solidifies, many
ways of seeing the world are likely to become incompatible with the consensus
arrived at, it's underlying presuppositions and metaphors, and the political will of
those supporting that consensus. A process that is built around a single vision
4The problem with the term real being used in this context, is that constituting what is possible
necessarily involves some element of seduction (Baudrillard, 1990,) in as mush as things arenever directly represented, but represented as by situated agents (Goodman, 1981.) Thus the
notion of a necessary direct relation between an act constitutive of what is possible and someunderlying reality is untenable. Nationalism is a striking example (Anderson, 1983.)
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from the beginning, and one that is driven by a great deal of non-negotiable
economic and political pressures, is therefore unlikely to be seen as being strongly
democratic. This seems to be confirmed by the way in which opposition, in this
case, seems to have been necessary to ensure that the regeneration project stayed
within legal limits. This seems to confirm the theoretical observation thatsupporting the ongoing articulation of differences of interest is a significant factor
in attempts to achieve forms of democracy that are meaningful for those
participating in them (Ibid.)
However the issue here is not simply one ofover-determination. Where there is a
wish to be part of, or have influence on, some over determined social scheme of
how things shall be done collectively (a discourse, institution or form oforganisational practice) then access to the over-determinations, or forms of
discourse, of these collectivities is a critical pre-condition to power (when seen as
the ability to influence events or rather practices.) The residents in this study not
only faced over-determination in the form of a vision for regeneration that they
felt was being thrust upon them, but also under-determination in the form of not
having access to the timings of meetings, to the details of the proposals, to the
relevant standards, to financial information about the regeneration schemes and so
on. They were left not able to put forward their own articulations of these socially
over-determined organisational narratives. In this case it seems that there is indeed
a certain de-reifying tendency in the ways in which market, or economistic,
organisational discourses are played out here. There is the specific over-
determination (reification) of housing densities, but also the under-determination
of the project management of a tendering process that retains flexibility for the
contractors, at the price of certainty and intelligibility for those being consulted.
This seems, in this study, to be a fairly specific process. The details of the
regeneration scheme are what is at stake here. That is a large part of what really
matters for those being consulted. But the negotiation is also implicated in wider
discursivepractices of economistic governance. These practices are clearly
discursive, and to a significant extent contingent upon this, in that they have been
contested at every stage, by the House of Commons Council Housing Committee,
by Andrew Dismore MP and by the RAs (who have obtained strikingly different
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outcomes in their negotiations so far.) These findings seem to confirm an overall
sense of capitalism undermining the meaning-making that is implied by a notion
of democratic citizenship, through both reification and de-reification (Dean,
2003.) These discursive trends seem to unfold in specific ways that seem highly
significant to the outcome, especially for those, supposedly meaning-making,citizens. So whilst it seems valid to investigate these types of processes at the
level of public policy (Taylor, 2002,) it also seems important to look into these
issues from an ethnography-of-mediation perspective, of how these policy
messages are received and played out. This is an approach that seems able to
explore what the many interpretations of public scrutiny of decisionmaking,
might mean in practice.
Inconclusion
Media Studies seems to partly be built on the often unspoken premise that there is
an important relation between practices of mediation and democratic practices.
And yet we seem hampered by the apparent gap between the texts of media and
the texts of democracy. It would seem that the connections can only be found
in practice. One area of linkage that is ripe for exploration is the articulation of
mediation and organisation as sets of practices. Some traditionally oriented
examples might be the ways in which media professionals modify their practices
in response to and in anticipation of the over- and under-determining moves of
politicians. The same study could be carried out in reverse, in the [rare] instances
where ethnographic access to political life might be a workable research strategy.
But in the spirit of the asylum (Foucault, 1989) I would venture that the most
fruitful place to explore this connection is where both mediational and democratic
/ political practices contribute to the re-forming of the lives of those that are not
personally considered as being a part of the public.
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Would you like to discuss what is happening here in WestHendon?
Would you like to join a group of 3-5 people, to discuss the West Hendonregeneration project? The discussion is likely to last around an hour. I am hopingto bring together people drawn from groupings in the area, such as local faithgroups, people in business together, or people attending groups together such as atthe multi-cultural centre.
My name is Daniel Taghioff. The discussions are for a small piece of research formy MA dissertation. I am studying the Anthropology of Media at the School ofOriental and African studies, University of London. I am looking at the ways thatthe West Hendon regeneration project communicates with the public. I am
interested in how residents and local business people feel about these messages,and also the other ways that they find out things about the project.
If you are interested in discussing the regeneration project and its likely effects, orhave any questions about this, then please contact me by the following means:
CONTACT DETAILS REMOVED
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Elizabeth Fitzgerald is 49-58 years old. She has lived in West Hendon for 9years, She was born in Ireland. She is a Catholic. She is a housewife.
Sabrina Fitzgerald is 19-28 years old. She has lived in West Hendon for 9
years. She was born in Dublin in Ireland. She sees herself as White Irish Roman Catholic. She is a trainee Solicitor.
Rev. James Fullam has lived in west Hendon for 19 years. He was born inDublin in Ireland. He identifies himself strongly with the Catholic Community.He is a Catholic Priest.
Fereidoon Mostowfei is 39-48 years old. H has lived in West Hendon for 18months. He was born in Iran. He is a Muslim. He runs a laundrette anddrycleaners on West Hendon Broadway.
ColinParsons is 39-48 years old. He has lived in West Hendon for over 20years (too long, he says.) He was born in Edgeware. He is a Roman Catholic(sort of, he says.) He works as a Telephone Engineer.
Donal Savage is 29-38 years old. He has lived in West Hendon for 3 years. Hewas born in Belfast in Northern Ireland. He has converted from Catholicism toJudaism. He works as an IT consultant.
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(Downloaded from MWHs site, July 2004)
Improvements will be made to Hendon Station.
A new drop off point and taxi rank at the station will be provided and a
pedestrian route will be developed to connect the station with the heart of West
Hendon.
To find out more about the proposals for transport click here.
Greening West Hendon
York Park will be redesigned with residents and relocated to create a safe
environment in which to play, socialise or just enjoy the peace and
tranquility of the Welsh Harp and Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Landscaped 'green corridors' will link the beauty of the Welsh Harp through
the new residential areas to the heart of West Hendon.
We will work with English Nature and local conservation groups to retain
and enhance the areas natural features.
Key enhancements could include improving water filtration, the
managed coppicing of some willows, creation of new ponds for
amphibians and the provision of new hides.
We will create better access around the Harp, this could include a new
pedestrian bridge across the Silk Stream.
To find out more about the proposals for the environment click here.
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Daniel Taghioff, MA Anthropology of Media, School of Oriental an