Small Towns, Austere Times: The Dialectics of Deracinated Localism

by Steve Hanson

Overview

This book explores small town austere Britain. The text argues for a return to both dialectical thinking and politicized community research, in light of the current 'austere' landscape, in order to intellectually militate against centre-right think tanks. It also urges for a kind of epistemological anarchism, which refuses to view the small towns which are the subject of the book through existing 'common sense' paradigms, particularly those of state and capital, but also those of cosy localism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780999975
Publisher:	Collective Ink
Publication date:	09/26/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	181
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Steve Hanson is a writer and researcher. He lives in the Calder Valley, UK.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Totally Locally', green radicals and the rural right 3

2 Several returns 10

3 Practical dialectics 12

4 Problematic dialectics 14

5 The trace 18

Small Towns, Austere Times 27

6 Rural and urban, public and private 29

7 Different temporalities of life and labour 36

8 Resolving speed via the public and private 39

9 Rural, urban, Empire 47

10 Returning to the public and private 53

The Dialectics of Deracinated Localism 61

11 Epistemology 63

12 The dialectics of working and not working 68

13 Jean, the DVD seller 79

14 Putting the practice in context 81

15 Jean, the busted DVD seller 92

16 Collapsing the binaries 96

17 Not local and totally local, the organic and inorganic, pure and impure 102

18 Polythene tunnels and powertools 104

19 Spreading the good news, some public and media discourses 110

20 Class, distinction and nostalgia 115

21 The politics of labour and the land 125

22 Exploring the roots 134

Conclusions 139

23 Returning to epistemology 141

24 Several returns to community research 144

25 Deracinated localism - the erosion and cohesion of 'conviction' 150

26 Final remarks 159

Endnotes 162