Factores que afectan la durabilidad del hormigón

At the start of each interview I asked each participant to comment on what they thought people who did not live on the estate thought about the estate and those who lived there. The strength of feeling varied across the sample (from extreme anger to resigned irritation) but all participants, irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity or length of time of residence, reported that they felt that the estate, and particularly the name of Blackbird Leys, had a very poor reputation that was persistent, unfair and inaccurate. For example:

I think the city is coloured by Blackbird Leys as a dreadful place, and no we won’t go up there thank you. That’s my feeling. I think it still has a very bad reputation. (Martha).

Participants often indicated their awareness of the ‘infamous’ status and used reported speech in recounting the views they perceived others hold of the area;

That’s the Blackbird Leys. As soon as you say Blackbird Leys people are like ‘ooh’. It seems to be kind of quite a wide perception. (Ella).

The cumulative effect has been to create a reputation that proves difficult to challenge and is seen by this resident as a permanent, if inaccurate, marker of the estates status;

Blackbird Leys has that reputation that hangs round its neck. And I think it’s a very great pity, because I don’t think it’s, it may once have been deserved, I really don’t think it is now. I feel rather strongly about it actually. (Jack).

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These findings echo those of other similar studies (Barke and Turnbull, 1992; Damer, 1989; Dean and Hastings, 2003; Hastings and Dean, 2003; Hastings, 2004; Jensen and Christian, 2012; Reynolds, 1986; Rogaly and Taylor, 2011). For example, Rogaly and Taylor’s (2011) study of the Larkman estate in Norwich reports that from at least the 1950s this estate had become associated with family breakdown, violence and criminality and participants in their study articulate similar notions of the negative reputation:

If someone says the Larkman, ‘Oh, she lives over the Larkman, she comes from the Larkman,’ that engenders a very particular response from people in Norwich …. even people who come from what I could consider other big council estates’ (Lorna, in Rogaly and Taylor, 2011: 2).

In similar ways Jensen and Christensen’s (2012) study of ‘territorial stigmatisation’ on a social housing estate, Alborg East, Denmark, notes how when contacting potential participants they would often assume that the purpose of the research was to explore how negative the area was. The authors argue that residents from areas that experience territorial stigmatisation are fully aware of the negative images of the areas they live in and of how these images inform and influence what outsiders find relevant about these areas and those who live there.

For participants in this study these type of negative attitudes reflect not just a set of misconceptions or poor judgements but a detrimental and profound ignorance throughout the rest of the city ‘… there is an abysmal ignorance of Blackbird Leys in much of Oxford. And I do mean abysmal.’ (Joel). A view also reflected in comments from others.

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It hasn’t got a very good reputation within the rest of Oxford. And there are a lot of things that people believe about this estate which aren’t true, and a lot of things which people don’t believe which are true. That’s how I’d summarise it really. (Jan).

The notion that people who do not live on the Leys are genuinely ignorant of the area is a strong motif that comes across in many of the interviews and participants frequently drew attention to the fact that, from their experience, people from other parts of Oxford either knew too little that was accurate or important about the estate and believed too much that was inaccurate or irrelevant. This includes mistaken notions of the immediate geography of the estate and the incidence of serious crime and disorder.

I think they (people who live in other parts of Oxford) think it’s [um] a crowded slum, or a forest of high rise towers.32 Neither of which is even remotely near the truth. I think they think it’s a crime hotspot and a dangerous area. I’m very sure they think it’s a dangerous area. Which it absolutely is not. I think the best way to judge that is by statistics, and I think the statistics show it’s neither dangerous nor a crime hotspot. But yes, there is that ignorance. It’s partly the geography that Blackbird Leys is out on the periphery and there are no through roads. It’s conveniently out of the way. (Mike).

The notion of the Leys as ‘on the periphery’ is reflected throughout the data and this extends beyond a product of geographical location to one which, participants report, includes non-geographical aspects such as being on the periphery of the rest of the city’s identity, concerns, ‘successes’ and life. In some cases those seen as responsible for perpetuating negative representations of the estates and, indeed, acting in accordance with those

32 _{There are two.}

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perceptions are identified as being from the wealthiest and most socially exclusive (but also, supposedly, the most intellectually and politically liberal) area of Oxford - Summertown or more generally North Oxford.

It’s a positive place up here. I mean I could tell you of instances. I shouldn’t name names, but a group was sort of invited to come and tell stories, and they said oh no, it’s not safe on Blackbird Leys, so they didn’t get an invitation. But that sort of publicity is just totally unnecessary. I needn’t tell you that it was a North Oxford group, and I’ve had lots of people say to me, why on earth do you want to live up there? It’s not safe. You need to move. Ach, it’s no less safe up here, then it is up the High or down Cornmarket at any hour of the day or night, and I think collectively we rather resent that kind of treatment, and its time it was stopped. It’s a hangover from the period when the estate was in trouble, but it’s pulled itself a long, long way. And it’s going on upwards, as far as I can see. (Liz).

Both Mike and Liz emphasise the inaccuracies within the strongly held negative views others have about the Leys. They both describe how negative representations, especially those focused on the ‘dangers’, ‘risk’ and levels of crime not only fail to compare with their own day-to-day lived experiences of the area but also do not correlate with official (police and local authority) data on crime, disorder and safety. Furthermore, participants readily demonstrate both a personal resentment of these attitudes and behaviours and a critical awareness of how such attitudes can continue to sustain negative and detrimental discourses and representations of the estates across the city and beyond.

Discussion about the relationship between the Leys and the rest of the city is often (as can be seen in the extracts above and in others later in this chapter) refocused into a specific

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commentary on divisions and differences between the east (in this case the area in and around the Leys and outside the ring-road) and the north (particularly Summertown and the surrounding area inside the ring-road) of the city. There are several examples of this refocusing in the data and it suggests a form of political narrative that reflects a number of actual differences in affluence and life chances as well as attitudes and values (Director of Public Health, Oxfordshire, 2007). In relation to the issues raised and discussed in Chapter Five it is important to raise the connections between these discourses and reflections at the local level and the wider discourses identified in the policy analysis. In some ways, it might be argued, that the ‘macro’ issues that are seen to characterise general divisions between different geographic areas, in terms of social and economic ‘well-being’ – for example, income, life-expectancy, health inequalities, educational attainment and other indices of deprivation all of which can be evidenced and detailed through readily available data – find reflection in the ‘micro’ politics of north and east Oxford or, in particular the differences between those who live outside and those who live inside the ‘ringroad.’

These types of comments readily draw to mind Cohen’s notion of how community is best understood as a relational idea and is often found ‘… in the opposition of one community to others or to other social entities’ (1985:12). For Cohen the use of the word community is only occasioned by the desire or need to express such a distinction and this way of thinking about the idea of community leads to a focus on what he sees as the space which embodies a sense of discrimination or, in his words, ‘the boundary’(1985: 12). The boundary ‘encapsulates’ the identity of the community and ‘… is called into being by the exigencies of social interaction.’ (1985:12). As mentioned in chapter three, Cohen also notes that whilst that there are objective markers of boundaries, for example, statutory, legal, physical, racial or linguistic some of the components of any boundary are not so objectively apparent and can be thought of as ‘existing in the minds of their beholders’ (1985:12). The repeated and

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deliberate act of comparing the Leys to the more affluent North Oxford is a reflection of the importance of both symbolic and physical boundaries and provides an example of how the meaning of community is as much bounded by conceptions of what it is not or what it is not like than of what it is. Cohen’s argues that it is both the meanings that people express about the existence and nature of the ‘boundary’ and the symbolic aspects of community boundaries that are crucial to understanding the importance of community in people’s minds are particularly relevant here. Importantly, for Cohen symbols not only represent or stand for ‘something else’ but they also allow individuals to supply some of their meaning. I think this conception of communities and their symbolic boundaries reminds us that the creation of ideas of communities requires active participation in the creation of that meaning on both or rather all sides of the ‘boundaries’.

As a symbol, it is held in common by its members; but its meaning varies with its members’ unique orientations to it. In the face of this variability of meaning, the consciousness of community has to be kept alive through the manipulation of its symbols. The reality and efficacy of the community’s boundary – and, therefore, of the community itself – depends on its symbolic construction and embellishment.

(Cohen, 1985:15).

As can be seen and will be further illustrated throughout this chapter the ‘boundaries’, both physical and symbolic, are clearly seen as important to participants and they frequently form part of the narratives generated in the interviews. We shall return to this part of the discussion later.