Race, Space, and Working-Class Community in North West England, 1968-1993.
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Manchester
Department Name: Arts Languages and Cultures
Abstract
My doctoral thesis will analyse the intersection of race, class, and space in the everyday life of the working classes in North West England, extending my MA research on the 1950s and 60s. The thesis will investigate how five spaces - the street, home, workplace, school, and leisure sites - were racialised in post-war England between Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968 and the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. This time-frame will extend the familiar emphasis on the period from 1948-68 to chart the development of a Black-British identity in three contexts: the 'moral panics' of the 1970s and 80s, the rise of multiculturalism, and urban regeneration projects in areas such as Hulme.
The thesis will primarily focus on Manchester, but will also explore North West England more broadly. The region has received less attention from scholars than the 'race relations capitals' (Connell) of London and the Midlands. My thesis will not only extend previous research into underexplored locations, but also shift attention from radical activism to the micropolitics of everyday life. My research will extend recent scholarship by historians such as Waters and Connell which seeks to recover black agency in staking claims to specific locales, by also analysing the strategies deployed to obstruct and prohibit such claims. I will deploy the expansive definition of 'blackness' in this scholarship and explore communities of African, Caribbean, and Asian heritage, acknowledging the pluralities of a 'Black-British' identity.
The thesis will deploy space as its central analytic tool in order to complicate static narratives of community and highlight the ambivalence of ideas of race across different sites. I will explore three key, yet underexplored, dimensions of race relations. First, how were individual and collective identities formed in specific spaces? Secondly, how did collective understandings of difference and familiarity in regard to race influence notions of belonging? Finally, how were the boundaries of belonging policed in different spaces? I will adopt Doreen Massey's definition which stresses the multidimensionality and fluidity of space, with individuals and communities competing to assert their authority.
The thesis will primarily focus on Manchester, but will also explore North West England more broadly. The region has received less attention from scholars than the 'race relations capitals' (Connell) of London and the Midlands. My thesis will not only extend previous research into underexplored locations, but also shift attention from radical activism to the micropolitics of everyday life. My research will extend recent scholarship by historians such as Waters and Connell which seeks to recover black agency in staking claims to specific locales, by also analysing the strategies deployed to obstruct and prohibit such claims. I will deploy the expansive definition of 'blackness' in this scholarship and explore communities of African, Caribbean, and Asian heritage, acknowledging the pluralities of a 'Black-British' identity.
The thesis will deploy space as its central analytic tool in order to complicate static narratives of community and highlight the ambivalence of ideas of race across different sites. I will explore three key, yet underexplored, dimensions of race relations. First, how were individual and collective identities formed in specific spaces? Secondly, how did collective understandings of difference and familiarity in regard to race influence notions of belonging? Finally, how were the boundaries of belonging policed in different spaces? I will adopt Doreen Massey's definition which stresses the multidimensionality and fluidity of space, with individuals and communities competing to assert their authority.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Frank Mort (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Jake Gandy (Student) |