Levelling Up, affective governance and tensions within “pride in place”
Levelling Up, affective governance and tensions within “pride in place”
The ‘pride in place’ mission of the UK Government’s Levelling Up agenda has foregrounded the importance of feelings in local and national development strategies. While pride in place gestures to the emotional symptoms of geographical inequality and the so-called left behind, it does not address their structural causes. This article explores how the lens of pride, and the affective governance it demands, has been used to reimagine place in UK policy. We argue that governance has taken a therapeutic and palliative turn, and that the pride in place mission obscures ideological inconsistencies in policymaking. The article explains how the government’s narrow conception of pride as a mechanism of affective governance illustrates tensions in places at different scales: between national and local issues; between public and private spheres; and between individual and collective identities. It claims that a more meaningful understanding of pride must be predicated on people’s collective capacity for felt and emotional responses. Crucially, any metrics for pride must capture that complexity to help restore social infrastructure in places.
Pride in place, affective governance, competitive placemaking, levelling up policy, place-based creative methods
Howcroft, Michael J.
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Marsh, Nicky
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Owen, Joseph
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Howcroft, Michael J.
4cddabd5-ee2a-400e-871b-572c1bb68df9
Marsh, Nicky
52e4155d-1989-4b19-83ad-ffa5d078dd6a
Owen, Joseph
5a9d0ced-96e5-45af-8dab-89a778d6a375
Howcroft, Michael J., Marsh, Nicky and Owen, Joseph
(2024)
Levelling Up, affective governance and tensions within “pride in place”.
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space.
(doi:10.1177/23996544241268342).
Abstract
The ‘pride in place’ mission of the UK Government’s Levelling Up agenda has foregrounded the importance of feelings in local and national development strategies. While pride in place gestures to the emotional symptoms of geographical inequality and the so-called left behind, it does not address their structural causes. This article explores how the lens of pride, and the affective governance it demands, has been used to reimagine place in UK policy. We argue that governance has taken a therapeutic and palliative turn, and that the pride in place mission obscures ideological inconsistencies in policymaking. The article explains how the government’s narrow conception of pride as a mechanism of affective governance illustrates tensions in places at different scales: between national and local issues; between public and private spheres; and between individual and collective identities. It claims that a more meaningful understanding of pride must be predicated on people’s collective capacity for felt and emotional responses. Crucially, any metrics for pride must capture that complexity to help restore social infrastructure in places.
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howcroft-et-al-2024-levelling-up-affective-governance-and-tensions-within-pride-in-place
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Accepted/In Press date: 17 July 2024
e-pub ahead of print date: 31 July 2024
Keywords:
Pride in place, affective governance, competitive placemaking, levelling up policy, place-based creative methods
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Local EPrints ID: 492704
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/492704
ISSN: 2399-6544
PURE UUID: a5d75e07-41e8-4f5a-aa95-b03aa9bc1c7d
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Date deposited: 12 Aug 2024 16:44
Last modified: 14 Aug 2024 02:04
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Author:
Michael J. Howcroft
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