Ambivalent heroes: narratives of community involvement Sarah Earthy, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey Presentation to Narrative and Memory Research Group 8 th Annual Conference 12 th April 2008 University of Huddersfield

Background PhD research: Social capital, social exclusion and understandings of community in an urban and a rural context (2005) 2 centre study: urban & rural villages Socio-economic deprivation / transience In-depth interviews (n=69) + observations Gender / life stage / life situation Experiences of place and community ‘Me, them and us’ – self and place Stories and narratives

“I think if I’d have lived somewhere else I would have got a lot more out of my life than I have living, living in (town), living in (locality). And, erm, I think I would have been a lot... I don’t think I’d have had two kids if I’d been away from here. [...] (Urban locality) is a poor area to live in. A really poor area. I think it’s degrading because it, it makes you feel so degraded to live in a place like this and go out every day and it’s just the same as sitting indoors because there’s nothing for you when you get out there.” (Caz, aged 22, lone parent)

Storied accounts Stories of a golden past Stories of hardship Stories of recent community Stories of intimidation Stories of a biographical turning-point Ambivalent hero stories Narratives of self and place Conditional belonging / located exclusion / keeping a distance Intimidation and resistance Engagement and withdrawal

The problem of community Policy objective – governance & representation Decline in social capital / decay in civil society Joiners not members Individualism, work & family, transient populations, communities of interest and choice Negative stereotypes: busybodies, pests, & those with limited lives Not being involved becomes the dominant discourse

“And I looked out of the window. This was the end of July so I’d just finished all my exams and this old boy came out and told the children not to play up against one of the garages because if they kicked the ball hard enough it could bounce back and go through their window. Well I turned round and (LAUGHS) flipped. Went out there and tried to explain to this guy that if they could really kick the ball that hard against the opposite wall and it would then bounce back across the wall and it would not go through his window. It wouldn’t have the velocity. (LAUGHS) Tried to explain logic to him but he just wasn’t gonna have it [...] So I went out there, turned round to these boys who lived just up the back here. I said to them you know ‘what would you like?’ And they said a sandpit area. They were around ten, eleven at the time. ‘And just a place to play football.’ So I wrote up this big letter to the council and just tried to explain that my son was coming to the point where he was going to be going out and playing in this road and he

would be facing these sort of situations and for the other children who live round here, they needed somewhere safe to play as well. So sent the letter off, made lots of phone calls to the council and drove them crazy and everything, you know. Because that’s what you’re taught when you go to college is that you keep on going. So I just, I got into that mode and I didn’t realise just how in your face I was actually being. [...] So I basically made a nuisance of myself for about three months and eventually the council sent me a representative who I later found out was doing it on an unofficial basis because she’d been sent round to pacify me but not to actually take on the project because they had too many projects going on. She put me in contact with the right people.” (Georgia, aged late 20s, initiator of wasteland project)

“We came back one day from shopping and there’s eggs thrown at the front of the house. So I just rang (housing assoc) and said ‘you can come down now and you can clean it up’. They came down. They took photographs. They knew who it was. They’d also had go’s at their next-door neighbour. Broken her front door, terrorised her but she wouldn’t stand up to them. But I said, ‘If it means it’ll stop, we will go to court’ I said, ‘because people like that should not terrorise other people who want to live a decent life’. And she came, one of the women came across and said ‘I’m going to blow your kneecaps off’ and I said ‘well if that’s what you want to do’. I mean I was frightened don’t get me wrong. I said ‘but if that’s what you want to do, then do it cos they’re really no good to me anyway’, I said. ‘Now you get the other side of the gate’, I said ‘because you’re trespassing’. I rang 999. It was logged. As soon as I rang, they said they’d send someone up here straight away.” (Jane, aged 40s)

Significance Involvement explained as an uncharacteristic response to exceptional circumstances Normative expectations of the private person Ideological gap in respect of the public citizen The cost of getting involved Narratives of ambivalence

“I’m still being battered by this particular project because I’m coming up across all the problems that people said that there would be. The vandalism, the negative (attitudes). The vandalism is the main problem and that is soul destroying but I’ve got on top of it because I’ve realised that it’s a social problem and it’s not personally at me so I’ve got that bit.” (Georgia, initiator of wasteland project) “And it did get too much for me in the end because I was the only one and I had the whole estate coming at us and it made me ill and I said ‘right’. But then (the MP) wrote me a letter to say would I start it up again? And I said I would.” (Steve, aged 50s, initiator of neighbourhood watch)