Deficiencia e impacto toxicológico del litio

, JUPON I V/TH A M ESV MERTON BROMLEY SUTTON CROYDON 0 kilometres 20

famed for a certain Protestant non-conformity exemplified by its most famous resident Daniel Defoe.

As with other outlying London districts large-scale development did not come until the early-to-mid nineteenth century, fuelled by rapid, piece-meal and speculative developments and the coming, in 1872, of a rail and tram connection to Bishopsgate. In many ways this development set the pattern for the area's future social geography. Around Abney Park cemetery (Figure 4) a number of large, flat fronted 'north London Town Houses' and villas were constructed for an established middle class. To the south of Church Street, in the 1860s and '70s, Albert Town was dominated by smaller terraced houses, inhabited by a 'respectable' middle class - bank clerks and craftsmen, the original 'new' service class (cf Benjamin, 1985; Smith, 1987).^ To the south, in Shacklewell, crowded a growing population of labourers and those in service to their wealthier neighbours. Indeed by 1862 only 11.5% of the population was described as 'upper class', with 75% categorised as 'working class'. The proportion of those in service was captured in gender differences in the local population. In the wealthier areas around Church Street 61% of the population were women (since most servants 'lived in') against only 52% of the population to the south.

The next great period of growth came between 1870 and 1914 when the area's population expanded fourfold, with an influx from both the City, and the East End. Most importantly, by then Stoke Newington was already infamous not only for pockets of considerable poverty, but also as an area of some ethnic and cultural diversity. By 1902, for example, the area of Shacklewell was described as the 'worst in North London' (a popular epithet, it seems, a similar description being used for the area around Archway further north) and was home to a largely immigrant Irish labour force, whilst the 1870s saw the in-migration of a considerable population of orthodox Jews (White, 1986; Widgery, 1993). The Jewish community were attracted to the area not only because of its proximity to the north London rag trade, and the support networks and synagogues of Bethnal Green, but also because of this reputation for liberal non-conformism.

This reputation may, however, have been less than deserved, as the areas's immigrant population suffered a familiar backlash from earlier residents: "In 1903 a writer in the St.Mary's Parish magazine commented on the changes since 1866: the rich had

^ Here Albert Town refers to the area demarcated in Figure 4. Stoke Newington's ward boundaries often refer to the names of those builders who originally developed the area in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and in its true sense Albert Town in fact covers a smaller area than suggested here (see Bolton, 1985). But within the local area the term has become synonymous with a larger area to the south of Church Street that is often taken to define 'Stoke Newington proper', and it is this use that I have adopted here - often using the two terms interchangeably.

To Tottenham 500 metres STAMFORD M)ney Park Cemetery T . t t To Clapton Giissold Park ^ Men Ad SHACKLEWELL Ridley Rd ^Market To Hackney aistonLane To Shoreditch To Highbury

Figure 4: Albert Town and Shacklewell

moved out and the poor had flocked in. Only 50 out of 200 families were the same. By 1906 ... the Jews had moved in, and many houses had become boarding houses for young foreigners" (Bolton, 1985:157). Such accounts are important because they warn us against positioning a sensibility to rapid local change as only a recent phenomenon.

The social geography that emerged at the turn of the century continued through the clearance and public housing projects of the 1930s, '40s and '50s, and can be seen in the area's employment and housing patterns. By 1961 40% of housing was publicly owned, largely concentrated in the south of the area (such that much original Victorian architecture survives in Albert Town and north of Church Street), 27% privately rented and 25% privately owned. Through until the 1960s textiles dominated local employment, with 25% of workers employed as out workers in 1947, and as floor space fell in the 1960s so outworking increased to 35%. Like other areas in inner London the next largest industry was light engineering and metals (47% of floor space in 1947, though falling to 18% in 1960) with printing and foodstuffs following closely behind.

For many residents the most significant changes in the area have occurred with two dramatic shifts in population from the late 1950s onwards. By then Stoke Newington was populated by a predominantly white, 'respectable' working class - a pattern emphasised with the movement out, in the 1960s, of the area's wealthier Jewish residents north to Stamford Hill. Starting with the largest in-migration of N ew Commonwealth residents of any London borough, through to the arrival of an Indian, Chinese and Bangladeshi population in the 1960s and 70s, to the more recent movement into the area of a Turkish community, and from the late 1980s a large population of Kurdish refugees, the area now forms part of one of London's most ethnically and culturally diverse boroughs.

Shadowing these changes in the area's cultural mix have come significant changes in class composition as, alongside other areas of Hackney, Stoke Newington has witnessed two rounds of gentrification. Both can be connected to the arrival of a set of 'taste makers' central to a sociology of time-space compression and postmodernity. In the early 1970s, as gentrification spread north and east from Camden and Islington (Figure 3), a class of 'marginal gentrifiers' moved into the area, attracted by relatively cheap housing costs and the possibility of local authority improvement grants (cf Rose, 1984, 1989). These residents were dominated by public sector employees, teachers, social workers and academics, or the purveyors of state funded 'symbolic goods' (Butler, 1991; Featherstone, 1991). In the mid 1980s, and as house prices rose, a second group of residents arrived so that the area now also has a remarkable concentration of workers

from media, design and the arts more widely.^

In many ways the attraction of the area for these groups can be understood as it offered a cheaper version of nearby Islington: "[Areas] such as East Dulwich, Stoke Newington and De Beauvoir, are soaking up those who can't afford Dulwich or Islington. If baby boutiques, interior design shops and places selling gifts from Italy are the yardstick, then perhaps areas such as Stoke Newington have arrived" (McGhie, 1994:76). Though there are tensions between these two fractions (not least over the impact of this second group on house prices, and the general cost of local shops and services) they can both be identified as members of the new cultural class that Ley (1994) identifies. They share what Gouldner has termed a common speech community - a culture of 'careful and critical discourse' acquired through higher education (Gouldner, 1979) - and one that is unique to the area (Butler, 1991). In particular, even though it may be increasingly characterized by a number of 'media trendies', in contrast to nearby Islington, Stoke Newington has re-gained a certain reputation for liberal political values or, as one local commentator puts it:

"'No politics please', said Holden Matthews. I agree but to write of Stoke Newington without politics is to eulogize the Himalayas without mentioning snow. This place has become the Islington of twenty years ago, the Kentish Town of a decade ago: it is the cutting edge of the gentrifying of London's Victoriana. We are full to the gunwales with chic new-wave politicians, ex-hippies with burgeoning businesses, poets with directorships. We are a bastion of the chattering classes. We are more a-twitter than a treeful of starlings".

(Richard North in an estate agent's promotional newspaper; quoted in Butler, 1991:142)

As North recognizes these residents have been attracted to Stoke Newington precisely because of its reputation for a certain political non-conformism. Central attractions are thus its Victorian architecture and a number of reminders of the area's more 'genteel past' (Wright, 1985). At the same time those same residents are also attracted by the area's essential 'working class vitality', and its 'exciting and alternative' ethnic and cultural mix (Wright, 1991).

Taken together these population changes have had a dramatic impact on the local social geography, and in many ways the area can now be divided into two quite distinct

^ For a detailed breakdown of these movements concerning issues of occupation, political allegiance, class fraction, gender and race see Butler (1991). But some idea of this concentration can be seen in responses to my original pilot study. In one of the 'trendier' streets off Church Street, for example, of some 16 houses 5 were occupied by people working in the media, 4 by those working in design or the arts (both groups having moved into the street in the mid 1980s) and a further 3 by those working in the 'caring professions' (2 teachers and a social worker) who 'pioneered' the street in the early 1970s.

districts.^ Around Church Street (Figure 5), and to a lesser extent Albert Town (Figure 6), the area has rejuvenated itself in the image of that curious mix of the 'traditional' and 'exotic' so characteristic of the tastes of a (white) metropolitan service class (cf Sassen, 1991). Pubs have changed their names to something more in keeping with the artistic sensibilities of these new residents (from the Crown and Anchor to the Samuel Beckett, for example) and new shops and wine bars have sprung up that cater almost exclusively to a middle class clientele. Where once you might have found a local green grocers, there is now a specialist delicatessen, kite shop and fitness centre. But even as emphasis is placed on the area's Victorian architecture, and its much remarked 'village feel', for those who have been attracted by its ethnic mix there are Peruvian rug shops, Anatolian cafes and reassuringly expensive Indian and Mexican restaurants. Church Street itself has recently appeared in a number of 'lifestyle magazines' as one of London's most charming 'hidden villages', and local entrepreneurs now seem ready even to take on Islington.^

But in the high street (Figure 7), and south in Shacklewell, is a very different world. As in the 1970s this area is still characterized by lower housing standards and a poorer population divided by race and culture.^ There one will find the Bangladeshi grocers used by those who work in the expensive 'Indian' restaurants of Church Street, but also a Mosque (previously a Synagogue, and before that a cinema), a Chinese fish and chip shop, Turkish bakers, Kurdish tea shops, and a purveyor of fine African textiles. Just off the high street one will also find many of the area's sweat shops.

Further south, that border between the contemporary inner city and the sanitised isolation the new cultural class residents are so keen to preserve (but also transgress) becomes more difficult to sustain, as the area merges with Dalston. Less than half a mile from the Peruvian rug shops of Church Street, is Dalston's Ridley Road (Figure 8), the local market where many of the area's poorer residents have to shop, and where as Paul

^ This geography was certainly traced by those members of tire new cultural class I talked to in an earlier pilot study.

^ Even as such shops celebrate the 'exotic' they are situated in an area that celebrates its 'village feel'. Indeed, for many in the pilot study, the relative isolation of the area (unlike Islington it is not on any tube link) was an added attraction. Not only, of course, does such isolation reduce housing costs somewhat, but supposedly lends Stoke Newington an air of a 'hidden village', one that can be found only by those with the appropriate cultural capital. A recent campaign by the local Retailers Association capitalized on this with a poster campaign on the local buses illustrating a Roy Lichenstein figure bemoaning 'If only I'd stayed on the 73 I could be in Church Street by now' (rather, one assumes, than Islington).

^ In 1973 only 48% of 'West Indian' households had any bathroom facilities, compared to 75% of white households. The area is still characterized by evidence of considerable poverty, but is now home to a population of Turks, Kurds, and Bangladeshis as well as West Indians, West Africans and sizeable Irish and English populations.

Figure 5: Stoke N ew ington Church Street

Figure 6: A typical street in Albert Tow n

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Figure 7: Stoke N ew ington H igh Street

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Figure 8: R idley Road market (Dalston)

Harrison writes: "Behind those faces lie reaches of time and space, the wheat fields of South Asia, the hills and olive groves of the Mediterranean, the plantations of the Caribbean, the ghettos of Poland, Russia and Germany, underemployment and poverty ... Ridley Road has to cater for the tastes and habits of the world" (Harrison, 1988:26-7). As these worlds jostle together in a series of terrible polarities, in many ways Stoke Newington has become a quintessential area in which to study not only the diverse processes of time-space compression, but also those conflicts liable to emerge as these different residents battle to construct their own unique sense of place.

3.3a If only I'd stayed on the 73': the selection of respondents

As was argued in chapter 2.3 the decision to construct a sociology of time-space compression around the experiences of the new service class was in many ways 'reactive', driven by an existing literature. But, because the thesis is not an examination of the new service class per se, the choice of which fraction of this rather diverse group to look at was in turn driven by the structure of the local area itself (though see chapter 2.3b). In contrast to nearby Islington (Figure 3), which has continued to attract higher earning groups from finance, medicine and law, gentrification within Stoke Newington has been dominated by the arrival, in different periods, of members of the new cultural class - those working in the 'caring professions' (both public and private) and in media, design and the arts more widely (cf Ley, 1994). Since this latter group in particular may play an especially pertinent role in that 'aestheticization of everyday life' central to issues of both time-space compression and postmodernity (Featherstone, 1992), it was decided to concentrate the analysis upon their experiences.

This research works with a qualitative methodology, and a qualitative approach works around a rather different set of 'sampling' procedures than those employed within a quantitative methodology. Concerned with capturing the ambiguity of inter-subjective experience, the selection of respondents moves around issues of the quality and positionality of the information different social actors can offer, rather than around issues only of number (McCracken, 1988). The 'sample population' can therefore be quite small, and for the present thesis it was decided to draw up a 'strategic continuum' of respondents, each of whom might throw light upon rather different experiences of the same processes. Within the new cultural class it was felt to be particularly important to bring out those differences associated with gender, as well as occupation (see chapter 1.2). Since within Stoke Newington the new cultural class are almost entirely white and almost all of the same age, ethnicity and age were already relatively constant, and no analysis has been attempted of variations by sexuality.

In an earlier pilot study a simple mail shot (Appendix 1.1), asking residents for help in a project looking at life in Stoke Newington, had proved the easiest way to attract respondents. An advertising campaign targeted at new cultural class residents, and placed in a number of the local middle class 'haunts' (from the jazz bar, to the health food shop), had been less successful and in retrospect was poorly worded (Appendix 1.2). For the main research it was therefore decided to concentrate initial efforts on a similar letter, but one aimed specifically at the local middle class population.

Thirty one letters were delivered in the streets to the east of Church Street, and Albert Town more widely (Figure 4). The letter simply asked for help in a project looking at life in Stoke Newington, and drew attention to a small payment for each meeting. Each was written on university headed paper, contained a reply slip with telephone number on which they could contact me to discuss further details, and a self addressed (stamped) envelope (Appendix 2.1).

Though I had a significant response from this first mail shot few replies were