Conference of the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British
Geographers,
August 26-28th 2009, Manchester
Call for Papers on:
Negotiating Professional Identities in Urban Development and Governance
Session proposed for sponsorship by the Urban Geography Research Group of
the RGS-IBG (UGRG)
Organizers:
Ellie Jupp, Oxford Brookes University
Andrew Inch, Oxford Brookes University
Recent UK urban policy regimes have resulted in a raft of new roles in the
various agencies and institutions charged with ‘delivering change':
neighbourhood managers, regeneration strategists, outreach consultants and
more. These roles intersect with those of longer established occupations,
such as planners and community development workers. Such changing
professional roles reflect a range of dynamics in urban governance and
policy, including fundamental moves towards ‘neo-liberal’ forms of
development,attempts to foster participatory and collaborative planning,
and
governance arrangements involving new kinds of partnerships and agencies,
as well as more over-arching shifts towards managerial and
consumer-orientated public service delivery. These dynamics are often
contradictory, and tensions between them are played out on a
micro-level in the everyday lives and encounters of those professionals
(broadly understood) undertaking these roles.
This session proposes that an engagement with the everyday encounters,
views and subjectivities of urban managers in such uncomfortable and
contradictory
contexts may be a fruitful way to move beyond over-arching narratives of
‘the state’ and ‘citizens’, providing access to accounts of the state as a
‘peopled process’ (Peck 2004). Attentiveness to the experiences and
sense-making practices of such workers may illustrate some of the impacts
of continual processes of institutional flux, and the tensions that must
be mediated in seeking to interpret and deliver on a bewildering range of
government initiatives (Newman 2004). In particular, ubiquitous calls for
‘partnership working’ in urban policy draw into question the boundaries of
many professional practices (Fournier 2000), and thereby require the
negotiation of new forms of ‘networked’ professional identities (Furbey et
al 2004). New forms of encounter with the 'publics' of urban policy may
also result in new subject positions for workers. Indeed whilst the current
environment places huge demands on workers, recent research has also
pointed to new possibilities for agency and self-determination (Bondi and
Laurie 2005). Research on the emotional and ethical work of regeneration
workers in ‘contested contexts’ (Hoggett et al 2006), points to the
interpersonal and affective capacities of such workers, capacities which
tend to be invisible in both policy and academic accounts of urban policy.
This session therefore proposes to explore the lives of the ‘street-level
bureaucrat’ (Lipsky 1980) in contemporary urban management, and how these
intersect with regimes of policy and governance. We seek to explore how
workers negotiate both older and newer roles and shape working identities
in the face of the demands and contradictions of national and local policy
environments, and the particular interpersonal dynamics of a given
context. We therefore seek papers which address some or more of the
following themes:
- Accounts of how professionals make sense of their working lives in the
complex and contradictory spaces of the 'congested state'
- Experiences of professionals in contexts of particular policy initiatives
(eg ‘Housing Growth Areas’, ‘Housing Renewal Pathfinder areas’)
- Experiences of ‘public participation’ or consultation for professionals
- Comparative or historical accounts of professionals in relation to the
current UK context
- New forms of training and ‘skills development’ among urban managers
- Accounts of how partnership working may challenge existing identities or
lead to the emergence of new forms of cross-boundary, or hybrid
identities.
- The use of ethnography, life-history or psycho-analytic approaches to
researching the lives of urban professionals
Initial questions, as well as abstracts (max 250 words) with full contact
details should be
emailed to the organizers at the following email addresses:
Ellie Jupp
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Andy Inch
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Please note the deadline for abstracts of 21 January 2009.
Dr Eleanor Jupp
Research Fellow
Department of Planning
Oxford Brookes University
Headington Campus
Gipsy Lane
Oxford
OX3 0BP
tel 01865 483 225
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