Narratives of Neglect: Community, Regeneration and the Governance of Security

摘要

Jacqui Karn's account of a multiply deprived council estate in the north of England is centrally concerned with residents' and professionals' narrations of inner-city deprivation and decline. Spending 18 months conducting ethnographic research in 'Millton' (her name for a neighbourhood that lies in one of the poorest wards in Manchester), Karn describes how she comes to know residents' experiences of living on 'the estate' first through meetings (of the local tenants' association, residents' steering group and a recently established regeneration project) and public events, and later by visiting residents in their homes to conduct semi-structured interviews, organising focus groups in the youth centre to survey teenage views on social (dis)order and ways of life locally, and eliciting the views of professionals including police officers, housing officials and community workers (who are involved in local regeneration) on the area's loss of fortune. These complex data provide the basis for her analysis of Millton and its socioeconomic problems.