Hyper, pessimistic activism

James Kennell’s blog on tourism, regeneration, cultural policy and practice

Symbolic capital in practice July 13, 2009

Filed under: Theory, bourdieu — James Kennell @ 10:19 am
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Much of the discussion about symbolic capital focuses on the cultural and social capital that individuals or groups don’t have, and how this can explain behaviour, attitudes and achievement.  Because of this we often fall into the trap of defining symbolic capital in negative terms, or explaining it by setting out the consequences of it’s absence.  I was fortunate yesterday to stumble across an example of how cultural and symbolic capital functions within an elite group in a positive sense, to support the values of the group as a whole and give advantage to it’s members individually.  The quotation below is from Nigel Nicolson, former MP and son of Vita Sackville-West.  The quotation comes from Geert Mak’s excellent In Europe.

“My inheritance was not extensive in the financial sense, but rich in contacts and influence.  And it lent me a natural self-confidence, a background against which I could place myself.  My father put it this way: ‘I detested the rich, but I was wild about learning, science, intellect, the mind.  I have always taken the side of the underdog, but I have also adhered to the principle of the aristocracy.”

In this quotation we see the interplay of social and cultural capital, the links to education and the development of a faux-essentialist conception of the self and the worth of certain conceptions of intellectual endeavour.  Finally, the values of the elite are held up as a moral principle.

 

David Harvey ‘The Crisis Today’ @ Marxism 2009 July 7, 2009

By far the best thing I saw at the conference and an insightful, challenging analysis of the next steps in the crisis in which David Harvey presents a new model of restructuring around seven ‘moments’ that offers an opportunity to the left for a reconceptualisation of it’s approach.

 

New arcades/promenades post June 23, 2009

Filed under: Theory, arcades / promenades, seaside, walter benjamin — James Kennell @ 11:27 am
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I’ve just posted about ‘the fantasy of cultural history’ and cultural materialism on the arcades/promenades blog.  Wesley has also posted a photo-essay that takes its cue from Brighton’s promenade.

“…fashion…this semblance of the new is reflected, like one mirror in another, in the semblance of the ever recurrent. The product of this reflection is the phantasmagoria of “cultural history” in which the bourgeoisie enjoys its false consciousness to the full.” (Benjamin 2002: 11)

The arcades/promenades blog is a representation of our attempt to grapple with the meanings and practices of the seaside promenade through the lens of Walter Benjamin’s ‘Arcades Project’

 

Call for papers: Coastal and Resort destination Management June 9, 2009

Filed under: conferences, seaside — James Kennell @ 1:42 pm
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I think this conference looks very interesting….the timing isn’t great for those of us with big teaching loads, but the setting alone is tempting!

Researching Coastal and Resort Destination Management: Cultures and Histories of Tourism

19th – 20th October 2009

Girona, Catalonia, Spain

2009 marks the hundredth anniversary of the formal designation of the Costa Brava, a title and destination region that has become synonomous with the emergence and growth of ‘mass’ tourism over the past century. The region today faces many challenges including maintaining tourist markets against competing destinations alongside environmental concerns.

This conference is therefore extremely timely in its aim of bringing together researchers who share interests in coastal and resort destination policy, planning and management in relation to culture(s) and histories of tourism.

These research areas are also clearly relevant to professionals and policy makers in destination management and the conference will provide a unique opportunity for researchers to share leading edge ideas, innovations and critical thinking with the professional destination manager participants at the European Union of Tourist Officers (EUTO) Study Visit to Catalunya which coincides with the conference. There will also be opportunities for delegates to participate in parts of the EUTO programme.

Conference Themes

The conference welcomes proposals for papers that address the development of tourism in coastal regions and resorts. Proposals might, for example address:

Creative uses of cultural, historical and heritage resources for tourism in coastal settings

Cultural events and festivals as animators of coastal resorts

Transnational approaches to and conceptions of destination policy and planning in coastal contexts

Community participation in coastal resort development

Building sustainable partnerships and stakeholder relationships between tourism, culture and heritage in coastal destinations

Competitive (dis)advantage, new tourist markets and coastal destinations

New and emerging technologies in coastal destination representation and marketing

Coastal destination image and branding

The conference organisers also welcome proposals for papers that address theoretical and applied issues and themes relating to destination management in the coastal contexts of Catalonia and the Costa Brava in particular

If you wish to submit a paper proposal, please send a 300-word abstract with full address and institutional affiliation details as an electronic file to Dr. Philip Long p.e.long@leedsmet.ac.uk

The deadline for the reception of abstracts is 31st of July 2009.

Please find regularly updated information regarding this conference, registration procedures and (at a later stage) a full programme at

http://www.udg.edu/jornades/EUTO2009/tabid/12969/Default.aspx

or email to euto2009@udg.edu

 

Can tourism be a new driver for regeneration? May 7, 2009

Filed under: Tourism, economic crisis, regeneration — James Kennell @ 10:51 am
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Click on the image below to read a short article I have written for the British Urban Regeneration Association.  In it, I question whether the tourism industry, conceived solely in economic terms, is an appropriate partner for regeneration or whether we need to develop an understanding of tourism as a social force before we turn to it as an income stream during the economic crisis.

fivepoundpint-001

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Methodspace April 30, 2009

Filed under: Teaching, conferences, research methods — James Kennell @ 10:36 am
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I have just found a website called Methodspace which claims to be ” the home of the Research Methods community from across the world”, a browse through is very interesting, if you’re into research methods like me….

The site is published by Sage and so I’m sure it will have a pro-sage text bias lurking in there somewhere, but the content appears to be mainly user-generated, with lots of forums and commentary.  If you are carrying out a research project then you should be able to use this site to get feedback on your research design and discuss research issues with like-minded individuals.

The reports of the conference at the LSE last month on social science research and public policy are up on the site, you can view them by clicking here.

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Impacts of the economic crisis on regeneration April 14, 2009

Brendan Nevin has written a gloomy article in the April edition of New Start, looking at the likely impact of the current economic crisis on regeneration policy in the UK.

Nevin starts with the (reasonably conservative) prediction that the UK’s annual budget deficit may reach £200bn by 2011, 12% of GDP and the highest in the developed world.  The financing of this debt, during a period of recession when government receipts will fall, will be a huge burden on the economy, leading to pressure on “the structure of state expenditure” or, in other words, large cuts in public spending.  Could this involve the intervention of the International Monetary Fund, recently re-capitalised with $1.3 trillion by the g20 to support countries struggling in the downturn?  In 1976, when the UK government turned to the IMF during a period when it could no longer service it’s debts, a 25 year period of belt-tightening followed.  Now, with the IMF at the vanguard of globalised neoliberalism, would the IMF impose the same ’structural reforms’ on the UK as it has on ‘developing’ nations seeking it’s help over the last twenty years?  This could be a trigger for the extension and deepening of the privatisation of UK public services and the capitalisation of the public sphere that has been the main goal of the neoliberal project here since 1979.

So how might this likely squeeze on the public purse effect regeneration policy?  Nevin argues that the coming period should see a re-evaluation of the generic finance and property development-led economic regeneration strategies that many of our urban areas have chosen since 1997.  As these sectors become less obvious drivers (i.e. funders) of regeneration, government subsidies will need to be re-targeted to other sectors, perhaps producing more local / regional diversity in regeneration policy with more sustainable future outcomes.

Paradoxically, the only way to maintain current levels of spending within regeneration may be to provide a greater role for the private sector in funding projects, at a time when private sector investment is grinding to a halt.  To do this will mean promoting more obvious returns on private investment, privatising the benefits of regeneration by  increasing the private ownership of new assets and revenue streams and probably by reducing the levy on private sector profits that has recently delivered an income stream for projects without an obvious profit-rationale, such as community facilities and social infrastructure.  We can expect to see the value of Section 106 and other ‘developer contributions’ falling as a way of incentivising private sector investment in development.  This will reduce the funding available for social infrastructure, while the need for strong social supports continues to increase as this recession bites.

So long as we continue to attempt to shore up existing models of regeneration funding, it is hard to see how the current, historically high, levels of spending on regeneration can continue.  The great danger is that in an attempt to carry on regardless, we slip into a more private sector-led mode of development that deepens inequality rather than addresses its causes.  New thinking about regeneration funding and policy is needed to avoid reversing the significant improvements made to our declining towns and cities over the last ten years.

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g20 protests April 3, 2009

Filed under: London, economic crisis, politics — James Kennell @ 9:44 am
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I was at the g20 protests in London on Wednesday and, now that the mainstream media coverage has pretty much died out, I thought it would be a good idea to present the view from inside the police cordon.  I went up to the protests along with my wife and my two daughters to support the view that another economic and political consensus is possible in society and to show solidarity with the many oppositional groups and excluded voices who were making up the main body of the protest.  The fact that the protest was happening at the heart of one of the world’s financial centres added a direct action element to the protest that previous protests didn’t have and we hoped that this would ensure a higher profile for the event.  I tweeted from the protest while we were there and continued to tweet news about it over the next day or so.

The standard media outlets have focused on the confrontational aspects of the protest and I’m going to look at that in this post.  It was very clear to us, right from the start of the day, that the police presence was producing a pressure cooker within which confrontation was becoming inevitable.  We left after near continuous physical and verbal pressure from police, fearing for the safety of our daughters if the police decided to escalate their tactics.  This is despite staying at the back of the crowds and attempting to maintain a reasonable dialogue with the police from the moment that we joined the black horse procession outside Cannon Street station.

start

To begin with , the police didn’t want to let us join the protest at all.  They shouted at us to get back away from the protesters and we had to convince them that they weren’t allowed to refuse us our right to protest.  The police claimed that the protest was too violent for us to enter, even through at that point there were only around 50 people surrounding a papier-mache horse, completely surrounded by a police cordon and vastly outnumbered by journalists.  Once we were inside this cordon, the police kept us stationary for about ten minutes then let us begin to march towards the Bank of England at a snail’s pace.  About ten minutes into the march, a girl asked me for help.  She was panicking: sweaty, terrified and shaking.  She asked us to look after her because she had got caught up inside the cordon and wanted to get out.  I asked a police officer to let her out and he refused.  I asked why and were told that we had been “detained”.  I asked what the legal meaning of this term was and if we had committed and offence.  The officer repeated that we had been detained and that we were not allowed to cross the cordon.  I said that if that was the case then they had a duty of care towards the girl and could they let her out as she was clearly in a state.  This was refused and I was pushed repeatedly by officers to move forward, this is while I was steering a pushchair with one hand and had my other arm around a crying girl.  I complained and was told that if I continued I would be in breach of the peace and would be arrested.  I was told that if the girl crossed the line she would also be arrested, for being in breach of the peace.  One officer told me that the girl was fine and to shut up.  I asked the officer to say that to the girl, and to look her in the eye to reassure her.  He could not, although he did shout “you’re fine” at the ground a few times.  There was no violent behaviour of any kind coming from the protesters.

While this was happening, my wife was being told that she was “a disgusting mother” by an officer and that the should “be at home looking after her children” rather than bringing them to a political protest.

black-horse

A few of the police we encountered at this stage were reasonable.  One eventually stepped in and explained their reasons for what they were doing and the fact they had been ordered to act in a certain way.  Another pulled funny faces at the girls and made them laugh.  These friendly faces were outnumbered at least 10:1 by aggressive, confrontational men and women from the Metropolitan and City police forces who were insulting, physical and threatening towards everyone who tried to talk to them or to get out of the cordon.

When we go to the Bank of England (BoE), it became clear that our group of protesters commemorating the 360th anniversary of the Diggers was the smallest by far.  Thousands of protesters were converging outside the BoE from all directions.  Above these crowds you could see banners from socialist, environmental, human rights, anti-capitalist, anarchist and other groups.  Samba music was being played by scores of drummers and bright plastic balls were being bounced around the crowd.

threes-a-crowda-real-crowd

At this point, we started to experience the police tactic of ‘kettling’ for the first time.  A line of police had extended behind us to block off a road and no-one was being allowed out.  They did seem to be letting protesters in, and journalists were allowed to come and go as they pleased.  The police line kept moving forward, slowly squeezing an increasing number of protesters into a smaller space.   Initially we were standing with our pushchair in a nice open space, with journalists pestering us for interviews and taking photos all the while.  I had my 2 1/2yr old on my shoulders and she was shaking her bells, enjoying the carnival atmosphere.  My 1yr old was fast asleep!  As the police kept moving in behind us, we became increasingly worried.  The atmosphere was changing as the crowd started to feel itself being physically and psychologically compressed.  I saw people crying and begging to be let out.  Around this time, large groups of people started to move together towards the cordon, creating pressure points that made temporary exits.  The police at this point were sending in snatch teams to remove individuals and the Forward Intelligence Teams were taking pictures of us and everyone around us.  Eventually the police created an exit area and we decided to leave.

We walked away from the protest as van after van of riot police were arriving, making the ordinary police who had ‘detained’ us look almost as harmless as PC Plum.  These police were coming into reinforce the existing police lines, despite the complete absence of any crowd violence at this stage.   The police force began to escalate their presence and take a more confrontational stance as a planned strategy, decided in advance, rather than in response to crowd trouble.  This is despite concerns about the legality of the ‘kettling’ tactic, which quite obviously works, like a kettle, to increase the pressure within a protesting crowd.

Later on that day, the riot police turned their attention to the Climate Camp happening down the road.  They charged into peaceful crowds who were holding their hands in the air and chanting “this is not a riot”.  There had been no violence from this protest, which had set up kitchens, hundreds of tents, organic toilet facilities and was running educational workshops.  You can view a video of one police charge by clicking here.

So, the violence from the crowd?  A few bank windows were smashed. Some graffiti. People pushed back against the kettling tactics, some of these people were very angry and responded to police aggression in kind.  All of these things happened after the police had escalated their presence.  The police response was not a response to the crowd, but to orders given in advance by senior police officers and politicians. Arrests? 110 at the latest count but arrests have to turn into charges to indicate a widespread problem.  Charges against protesters?  Only 5 people were charged with anything, from a crowd of thousands that is pretty good going.  How does that compare to a football match, or to an English town centre on a Friday night?

The policing strategy for the g20 protests appears to have been reacting to 3  factors:

  1. The protest took place in the City of London itself and on a weekday.  It interrupted business and thus carried an economic, rather than a purely symbolic cost.  Symbolic impacts are less threatening than economic impacts, which must be eliminated, even at the cost of £7m to the taxpayer.  Previous protests in the City have lead to financial institutions threatening to relocate unless they are ‘protected’ from protest.
  2. It involved groups calling for dramatic changes to the world political and economic system, rather than groups calling for reform.  Reform can be co-opted into the system, whereas demands for change pose an existential threat and should be silenced.
  3. A tiny, tiny minority of groups involved appeared to be calling for a violent response to the economic crisis.  If these groups – most of whom are known to police – break the law then they can expect to be arrested.  This does not excuse the repression of a mass political protest.

The protest itself was made up of scores of groups, some of which could be loosely grouped together under the lazy media headlines of ‘anti-capitalist’ or ‘anarchist’, but including Quakers, pro-palestine groups, anti-war campaigners, charities, environmentalists, families, guerrilla gardeners and citizen journalists, to label just the people hovering around our pushchair!  I went to this protest worried about the political response to the economic crisis and expecting to have my voice heard.  I left the protest with a deep feeling of unease and menace about how political protest in general in this country is policed and reported and the extent to which governments will go to repress dissent.

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The Apprentice does seaside regeneration! March 26, 2009

BBC1 show ‘The Apprentice’ is taking on the re-branding of Margate in Kent as one of the tasks for it’s contestants in the latest series, which started last night.  Contestants will be tasked with designing a brand for the seaside town that can capture the town’s aspirations as a 21st century seaside destination.

 

South East tourism and the economic crisis – TV update March 23, 2009

Filed under: Tourism, economic crisis — James Kennell @ 9:29 am
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You can view the report on the BBC Politics Show South East about tourism and the economic crisis by clicking here.  The link will open up theshow in the  BBC iPlayer.  The whole article starts 30 minutes in and I am interviewed along with two other contributors from 38 minutes.