Event overview
A spatial class analysis of the logic of value in land and people?
The logic of capital ostensibly commodifies every aspect of our lives: this is evident no more so our relationship with land. The distinctly urban nature of the economic crisis has surfaced gross inequalities. While glib – if media representations of class are dubbed ‘poverty porn’ - we might refer to this gratuitous commodification of land as ‘property porn’. Land value is a key form of capital and so the management of (working-class) places and people forms a crucial part of neoliberal governance. ‘Problem people’ ‘problem places’ are cast as deviant and recalcitrant barriers to neoliberalisng processes and are submitted to the logic of capital and rationalising discourses. Here, the value of land and the (de) value of people coalesce. My paper draws from research in Glasgow in different neighbourhoods with different regeneration projects – one pre-crisis, one post-crisis – and under different governments. This comparison reveals the evolution of state-led gentrification and its wider and deeper impacts and how this project matures. This involves devaluing the poor to achieve a revalorisation of land values and as means of governance – the crucial axis where territorial stigmatisation and gentrification meet.
Dr Kirsten Paton is an urban sociologist who works broadly on cities, class, crime and social policy. Her research is underpinned by a theoretical interest in the phenomenological and material relations of class within the context of urban restructuring which are explored through theories of neoliberalism, Western Marxist theory and new theoretical approaches in stratification: New Working Class Studies and Cultural Class Theorists. In particular she draws from Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to understand the political project of neoliberalism and the reciprocal relationship between urban restructuring and the remaking of contemporary working-class culture. She is the author of Gentrification: a working class perspective (2014, Ashgate)
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 17 Mar 2015 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm |
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