TY - JOUR

T1 - Place-making and Place Maintenance

T2 - Performativity, Place and Belonging among the Middle Classes

AU - Benson, M.

AU - Jackson, E.

PY - 2013/8/1

Y1 - 2013/8/1

N2 - This article introduces performativity and processes of place-making into discussions about middle-class residents’ place attachments. It draws on interviews with middle-class residents in two different London neighbourhoods, Peckham (inner urban, socially mixed) and West Horsley and Effingham (commuter belt villages), to argue that (1) the practice of place is key to understanding middle-class claims to belonging; and (2) ways of ‘doing’ neighbourhood must be understood within the context of other circulating representations. While respondents in Peckham work with or against prevailing discourses about their neighbourhood as they perform place, in the commuter belt, residents strive to uphold the image of their village as the rural idyll, a classed and racialised vision. The contrast between the inner city and commuter belt reveals the different performative registers through which place is practised; while in Peckham middle-class residents invest in processes of place-making, respondents in the commuter belt engage instead in active processes of place maintenance.

AB - This article introduces performativity and processes of place-making into discussions about middle-class residents’ place attachments. It draws on interviews with middle-class residents in two different London neighbourhoods, Peckham (inner urban, socially mixed) and West Horsley and Effingham (commuter belt villages), to argue that (1) the practice of place is key to understanding middle-class claims to belonging; and (2) ways of ‘doing’ neighbourhood must be understood within the context of other circulating representations. While respondents in Peckham work with or against prevailing discourses about their neighbourhood as they perform place, in the commuter belt, residents strive to uphold the image of their village as the rural idyll, a classed and racialised vision. The contrast between the inner city and commuter belt reveals the different performative registers through which place is practised; while in Peckham middle-class residents invest in processes of place-making, respondents in the commuter belt engage instead in active processes of place maintenance.

KW - belonging

KW - middle classes

KW - performativity

KW - place and spaces

KW - residential practices

U2 - 10.1177/0038038512454350

DO - 10.1177/0038038512454350

M3 - Journal article

VL - 47

SP - 793

EP - 809

JO - Sociology

JF - Sociology

SN - 0038-0385

IS - 4

ER -