DISPOSICIONES ESPECIALES PARA LOSAS Y ZAPATAS

Much research using the activist ethnographic method begins from the standpoint of ‘insider’ and has been shaped in a context of working with relatively coherent, stable and self-contained groups (Haiven and Khasnabish, 2014). Where research has taken place amongst political milieus constituted of groups which are diverse, adversarial and characterised by ideological conflict (e.g. Halvorsen, 2015), the literature offers few pointers on how to conduct politically- committed research satisfactorily. This is not a call to ‘rise above’ these tensions – for interacting within this milieu inevitably implicates the researcher within it (Davies, 2009) – but to think critically how the activist ethnographer can negotiate the resulting challenges. In one interview, a Labour councillor warned that “people who get caught up in the ‘hard-left’ [in Liverpool]; they’re chewed up and they’re spat out. They’re just fodder.”38

While this claim is certainly not representative of my own experiences, it nonetheless highlights the emergent tensions existing between some of the different groups outlined in Table 4.1. Where theoretically the activist ethnographer is willed to take sides, I learned that this can have serious implications for access as well as building trust. Speaking to an individual of one group on a demonstration can mean there is a risk of being positioned by other activists as ‘siding’ with the former’s organisation, a risk that can cause unease, hesitance and suspicion from the latter.39 This posed further challenges when, for example, I wanted to attend the meetings of different groups. In this case, I reaffirmed that I was genuinely open-minded, sympathetic and politically undecided, and that as a scholar(-activist) I was committed to exploring different perspectives. Thereafter, engaging in rigorous and honest debate about the relative merits of each perspective did enough to allay activists’ fears. Still, when accusations of fascist involvement within some anti-austerity groups led to movement fall-out, the implications of taking a principled position were that access was restricted to those groups, and also meant a reduced chance of securing an interview. Yet, much of this conflict would be unbeknownst to the relative newcomer. For example, in one instance, two groups/parties shared historic differences on the positions they adopted during the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas Dispute. Many

38 _{Cllr Jane Corbett (Labour), interview.}

39 _{On many occasions, I was assumed to be a member of a particular party or organisation if I were}

Chapter Four: Researching Anti-Austerity Politics: A Methodological Approach

101 historic personal conflicts were also present (Chapter 6). Regardless of whether I was defined as an insider or outsider, practicing politics and political research in this environment was highly challenging. Thus, while living in Liverpool provided ease of access to the research site, this did not guarantee the smooth roll-out of an activist ethnography.

Moreover, political research requires hope (Solnit, 2004). That is, the researcher must engage under the belief that the movement can conceivably contribute to the production of alternative political imaginaries. Once this hope finally broke down, owing to movement fall-out and my own increasingly critical stance, this presented a series of challenges. I was becoming frustrated with dominant actors who were unwilling to reconsider aspects of movement analysis and strategy. It seemed that an individual could only be taken as a credible political actor by reproducing common movement discourses.40 On reflection, I did manage to negotiate this contested terrain by carving out a space in which other similarly-minded movement participants and I sought to generate alternative analyses, but it did not have a significant impact upon the politics of the milieu. While Russell (2015) deliberates the risk of researcher drop-out as one suffers the pressures of having to write the scholarly thesis, I found that the ongoing dynamics of the movement led to a more ‘natural’ exit from the movement in February 2016, whereas I had previously intended to participate long after the thesis was completed.41 _{However, this posed the concern of how to position the writing of this thesis}

appropriately. I therefore conclude by making clear that I am speaking from the perspective of a still sympathetic, yet critical, researcher and former activist now disengaged from anti- austerity politics in the city. The value of such research is now drawn out in the following empirical chapters.

40 _{This observation was discussed and corroborated by other activists, and is analysed in Chapter 6.} 41 _{In late 2015, the umbrella organisation, Liverpool against the Cuts, effectively dissolved. This}

102

Chapter Five

5Situating Austerity Urbanism: The Case of Liverpool City Council

5.1 Introduction

This chapter examines how local authorities are responding to austerity in a period of profound and unprecedented fiscal retrenchment. The dominant conceptual framework of ‘austerity urbanism’ (Peck, 2012, 2016) portrays municipal governments as submissively implementing austerity measures in ways consistent with techno-managerialism (Davies and Blanco, 2017). Interrogating the example of Liverpool City Council (LCC), this chapter holds that such structuralist accounts fail to consider how the politics of austerity are both discursively and materially ‘pulled down’ by a local authority and other institutional actors (Newman, 2014; Penny, 2016), and how austerity politics has, therefore, become (re)framed and actualised according to certain place-specific contexts (Fuller, 2017; Fuller and West, 2017). This chapter contributes to emerging literature which locates austerity urbanism as a highly variegated process (Meegan et al., 2014; Newman, 2014), and answers Fuller and West’s (2017) invitation to explore the ‘geographies of austerity urbanism’. The results from Liverpool make three interventions in the debate: first, that austerity is ‘absorbed’ by the local state and politicised in ways contrary to structuralist interpretations; secondly, local government is therefore not passive but a “strategic actor” (Newman, 2014: 3290) in the enactment, negotiation and contestation of local forms of austerity urbanism; and thirdly, the possibilities for alternatives to austerity depend upon particular mobilisations of place-based discourses and identities, which are constantly being disrupted and (re)shaped from below (Featherstone, 2015). Unpacking the geographies of austerity urbanism shows that, for LCC, austerity is at once rhetorically contested yet, paradoxically, embraced as the transformative catalyst to radically reshape urban governance (and with it civil society), and to embark upon new rounds of place-making (Boland, 2008; Sykes et al., 2013).

The chapter proceeds as follows: section 5.2 reviews the literature on austerity urbanism and considers the extent to which local authorities are managing, resisting, and producing alternatives to austerity at the local level, and concludes that more place-sensitive investigations are required. Thereafter, section 5.3 examines how austerity is being absorbed by LCC and the different discourses which inform the latter’s approach to governing ‘in/against’ austerity, and section 5.4 examines the role of LCC in crafting consensus and place-making through engagement with local communities. Section 5.5 considers the possibilities and limits of austerity-inspired urban entrepreneurialism as a means to emancipate local communities and pursue social justice at the municipal scale, before section 5.6

Chapter Five: Situating Austerity Urbanism: The Case of Liverpool City Council

103 summaries what insights have been gained through interpreting austerity urbanism through a geographical lens.