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