Plenty, ‘cuts’ and ‘waste’: how young professionals imagine the economic in post-recession Peckham
Abstract
This report looks at how young professionals interviewed in Peckham in 2012 conceptualise the post-recession economy in the context of their personal household and the local borough. It takes a grounded theory approach to the secondary analysis of nine transcripts drawn from the study: ‘The Middle Classes and the City: social mix or just ‘people like us? A comparison of Paris and London’ (Baqué et al 2015). Four years on from the global financial crash and two years into coalition government austerity measures, many view recession in terms of their pre-existing financial struggle to live in London. Yet despite this the majority are ‘insulated’ from day-to-day financial constraints, and use a range of informal strategies to maximise their resources in the borough. Participants do not conjecture significant change to their personal finances -positive or negative- and live in a “constant present”. When considering the local impact of recession, participants attach deviance to certain forms of consumerism and thereby reflect the public austerity discourse. Rye Lane is imagined as an uncompetitive, ‘wasteful’ market – where supply outweighs demand. While Dulwich – a place where demand overreaches supply – becomes symbolic of the high consumption unsustainable financial market prior to the crash. Participants emphasise their behaviours in contrast, as: the practice of saving, supporting businesses which deliver consumer choice and use of self-sufficient social systems over public resources. Participant’s attitudes to the economic and civil society are appreciated through the lens of Foucault’s (1977) theory of ‘governmentality’. This report contributes to the exploration of recession in the sociological field since 2010 which has focused on vulnerable groups and gender readings.
Introduction
The years which followed the global financial crash have been marked by a succession of fiscal policies by the UK government aimed at deficit reduction. Speaking at a Conservative party conference in 2009 the then Prime Minister David Cameron stated “the age of irresponsibility is giving way to the age of austerity” and pledged to kerb perceived excessive government spending. The five-year austerity programme began in 2010 under a new coalition government – two years before the recording of the Peckham interviews as part of the ‘Middle Classes in the City’ study.
Alongside this the coalition government outlined a programme of policies in support of the ‘The Big Society’ – a flagship of the 2010 UK Conservative Party general election manifesto. The concept is one ‘whereby a significant amount of responsibility for the running of a society is devolved to local communities and volunteers’ (OED) and has been widely linked to a free market ideology. At the time of the Peckham interviews the policies were in circulation but have since been retired from public party discourse. Austerity policies have been directly linked by sociologists and in other disciplines to disproportionate impacts on, among others: working families with children, women of colour and pensioners. The legacy of austerity policy changes and sociological commentary continues to date.
The following report analyses attitudes to the economic in the context of these two intersecting policy strands – austerity and The Big Society. The method taken is a grounded theory approach to the secondary analysis of nine transcripts taken from ‘The Middle Classes and the City’ (2012) study. Analysis draws upon Strauss and Corbin’s (2008) procedures with particular use of: questioning, comparisons and negative case analysis.
Foucault’s theory of the modern state’s governmentality can be used to understand Peckham in 2012, at a time when the regulatory ‘instrument’ (Foucault 1977: 22) of fiscal intervention (in the form of welfare cuts) intersects the proposed ‘counter-conduct’ (Foucault 1977: 6) of civil society imagined in ‘The Big Society’ – that will, Foucault predicts, ultimately prevail over the state as we know it. It is a place where one participant (doctor, 20’s) suggests there is ‘nothing to particularly, to kind of rail against’ (P25) despite the landscape of public sector cuts. The statement is highly suggestive of the operation of subtle techniques that, Foucault suggests, allow the state to manage the collective in this way.
In my analysis I set out to understand how recession is factored into participant’s description of the present and projection of the future and to gauge participant’s attitudes to austerity policies through the transcripts. I find evidence of acceptance of Foucault’s stripped back state, one which delivers the ‘essential function of ensuring the security of the natural phenomena of economic processes or processes intrinsic to population’ (birth, etc) (Foucault 1977: 58).
I show how the majority of participants interviewed experience ‘security’ as insulation from the impact of recession in the present, and how this is understood by some in the context of living in an already financially risky capital. We find an inability to conceive of change to their economic position in future and thus participants occupy, a constant present which accommodates risk and and the inability to secure assets. All participants use a range of self-sufficient strategies that allow them to maximise their personal resources in the borough and control their use of public services – distancing themselves from bureaucracy represented by Southwark council. They therefore embody the competition between private individuals that Foucault argues engineers the ‘most favorable economic situation’ (Foucault 1977: 286) for the state. Recession is imagined by some participants as a moral reawakening of the consciousness to the cause of civil society, but there is little evidence of this in formalised behaviours by participants.
Participants express concern over the sustainability of the local economy and whether ‘people like us’ are catered for. In these precarious times participants see their economic intervention as bringing equilibrium through safeguarding consumer choice. Participants define themselves against deviant consumers and markets. This includes those that use Rye Lane, a location which becomes associated with commercial inertia and misuse of resources, a market where supply is imagined to outweigh demand. In the same way they define against consumption in Dulwich, a location which is associated with decadence and hypocrisy, a market where demand is imagined to outweigh supply. Groups at both sites are understood as deviant- in the association of over-consumption, high time capital and underutilisation of the person. The local therefore becomes a way of exploring wider anxieties about provision in a globalised neoliberal economy.
Overall I conclude that participant’s economic imagination, particularly those who see themselves as financially challenged, reflects the public discourse of austerity used to justify cuts. However further data collection to expand the richness of the texts would allow further exploration of attitudes to economics and austerity policy. In addition further data collection on participant’s attitudes to the riots could be fruitfully examined in light of Foucault’s secondary form of counter-conduct, the so-called ‘absolute right to revolt’ (Foucault 1977: 293).
Methodology
The transcripts total nine from a set of 35 conducted in the Bellenden Road area of Peckham in 2012, selected as part of a ‘gentrifying’ neighbourhood of London, with a further a 35 interviews also conducted in each on the following type of neighbourhoods in the city: gentrified, suburban, gated and exurban neighbourhoods. Peckham is a district of south-east London in the borough of Southwark. Latest population estimates show that 15010 people live in Peckham ward. Peckham has a total BAME population of 71%. 84% of the population in Peckham are in the most deprived quintile nationally. Alongside the transcripts I had access to a spreadsheet showing key demographic information for the 12 interviewees and the original research proposal detailing research methods.
In reflexively accounting for my positionality as a researcher I should note that I have volunteered in the area (post 2016) suggesting I may not appreciate the changes being experienced up to 2012. However since the volunteering was with the elderly community in the neighbourhood this has made me aware of at least one group that use the neighbourhood outside of those the transcript sampling represents. I also note synergies with participants in being: London-based, a public sector professional, in the 20-30 age bracket suggesting I must be careful to identify and cross examine interviewees assumptions when they appear.
While the reuse of secondary data can allow new interpretations to emerge there are some challenges. Mauthner et al (1998) warn of the role of the researcher in construction of the data which even reflexivity cannot take full account of. Hammersley (1997) has referred to this as the ‘relative lack of contextual knowledge’ that is ‘seen, heard, and felt, during the data collection process’, but points out primary researchers operating in teams often face similar issues. Indeed Bishop (2007) points out that the primary researcher also ‘produce(s) some (usually most) of their data through engagement with these artifacts’ referring to what is lost to the recording device and transcriptions. I did not have field notes to contextualise data and the inability to clarify details in the real-time of the interview has resulted in some losses of meaning, e.g the meaning of a BCCSR brochure in P30 has been inferred. I further cannot account for the use of visual prompts (‘pictures of the neighbourhood’) by the original researchers to facilitate the original interviews and how these may have shaped discussion. There is also a dimension of ethical challenge, is using data which participant’s have not granted me access to in full knowledge of my research project.
Miles (1979: 590) refers to qualitative data as an ‘attractive nuisance’ in its simultaneous richness and the complexity of finding analytical routes. I therefore selected the grounded theory model by Corbin and Strauss for it’s degree of prescription. The use of secondary qualitative data makes a coding based technique desirable so that concepts can be generated directly from the text which was my only source of data. The fairly structured nature of the questioning across different interviews, lacking in follow-up questions meant I considered it not disposed to narrative analysis.
However many criticisms have been waged at grounded theory. Glaser (1992) has written of the selective application of GT methodology into Qualitative Data Analysis research methodology results in a mixed method approach that actually blocks theory. Other criticisms include the ability to conduct complex analysis without comprehension of the pillars of grounded theory (Weitzman 2000; Bringer, Johnston, and Brackenridge 2004). While reflexivity has been under accounted for in many grounded theory studies, a position which researchers are now seeking to address (Gentles et al, 2014).
The vast majority of sociological projects which take grounded theory approach typically turns up concepts/ substantive theory rather than wider formal theory. To generate formal theory typically requires data collection in contrasting settings. Given the small scale of data set (in not having the corresponding Paris data) I expected and was content with generating concept outcomes, rather than formal theory.
I initially read through all nine texts, making memo’s of emergent themes of interest. These were:
• The legacy of the global financial crash;
• The construction of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ consumerism;
• In-borough inequality – with regards to income and resources;
• The competition for borough resources by participants – chiefly private housing;
• The construction of deviance – from criminal deviance to ‘cronyism’;
• Participant’s self-defined ‘liberalism’;
• Participant’s reported narrow engagement with public sector services & local issues
I selected the central theme of imagining the economic as one which would allow me to explore the central phenomenon of the legacy of the global financial crash through the lens of the remaining six themes. The data set included participants employed in both private sector and public sector making this a potentially rich set of cases to draw from.
I poised the research questions:
• how recession is factored into participant’s description of the present and projection of the future;
• can participant’s attitudes to austerity policies be gauged through the transcripts.
I had a number of hypotheses or hunches:
• That respondents’ language has traces of the public discourse of austerity and/ ‘big society’.
• That respondents who report being more financially secure may reference wealth inequality in the borough less
• That respondents see local council provision as not for them, comparative to their consideration of other residents in the borough
• That deviance might be associated, though not exclusively, with certain forms of consumerism
On a second read I open coded the text before grouping codes under parent nodes. Corbin and Strauss call this stage ‘the process of breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualising and categorising data’ (Strauss and. Corbin 1990:61). At this stage I tried to code a number as from participant’s own wording (‘invivo’) – to remain as close to the text as possible, in line with a grounded approach. A number of codes were later grouped under the ‘priori’ code of deviance one with an antecedent sociological theoretical framework. My coding framework shifted throughout the iterative process between coding and analysis to settle on a coding framework.
Grounded theory is characterised by the risk of data fragmentation. To mitigate against this I coded chunks of text (typically full participant answers) rather than partial text. I further formed a grid to account for participants coded answers under different nodes to prevent decontextualisation from their overall interview and Excel demographic data.
When coding I used the two techniques Strauss & Corbin refer to as the ‘mainstay of analysis’ (2008: 7): asking questions and making comparisons. I isolated key sections and asked sensidising questions of these. These questions helped identify the potentially different actors shaping participant’s views about austerity politics: partners, management at work, the public sector profession, the university sector. It also helped identify differences in definitions, for example in how participants understand the Southwark Council’s function. This form of questioning also identified the different consequences with which participants are acting, e.g the differing consequences of lost profit at work for P38 and P30. While within code constant comparisons brought out different aspects of the same phenomenon. For example, participant’s identification of being ‘liberal’ ranged from lapsed party affiliations to identification with the area of Peckham.
Analysis generated the following concepts, which I did further theoretical sampling from the transcripts to refine and populate:
• Positive or negative relative insulation
• Constant present & offset future
• Defence of consumer choice
• Censoring of excessive consumerism & low productivity
• Resilience to inequality (as a form of liberalism)
• Self-sufficiency from bureaucratic systems
I used theoretical questions to make connections between concepts. These included what is the relationship between relative insulation and does this affect how the consumerism of others is understood. I conducted negative case analysis finding aspects exceptional to these concepts, many of which were found in transcript P38. I found I did not reach the theoretical saturation at the concept level given the small size of the sample and degree of variation between participants. This hindered my move from concepts to categories and development of substantive theory. Though the analysis techniques supported the testing of hypotheses and answering of research questions.
Literature Review
In the wake of welfare policy rollouts, a research imperative emerged to approach the impact of the phenomenon and austerity policies on individuals and societies. With this came a drive to discover a potentially new structure of inequality. A number of studies have focused on the gendered impact of recession (McKay et al 2013; Harrison, 2013; Spitzer and Piper, 2014, Treanor 2015; O’Loughlin et al 2015). The greatest impact of public sector cuts is inevitably waged on women: as single parents, public sector workers and greater users of public services (McKay (et al 2013). Harrison’s (2013) qualitative study on the impact of economic decline in the Sussex town of Newhaven critiques the focus by academics and policy professionals on ‘resilience’ with regard to recession, which stimatisatises the vulnerable and obscures structural factors. In interviews, female exercise of ‘resilience’ is seen to levy declining health, assets, and be unsustainable. Treanor’s study (2015) takes a longitudinal view of financial vulnerability (studying 5217 children born in Scotland in 2004–2005) to show young children are adversely affected by their mothers’ emotional distress rather than direct economic effects. O’Loughlin et al’s study (2015) takes a cross-national, cross disciplinary focus, to explore the effects of austerity on European men, which he says is experienced as a ‘rites of passage’ in which male identity can be a coping resource. The study finds commonality across differing demographic and socioeconomic backgrounded individuals in the areas of identity, expectations and aspirations. A gap emerges in the literature in terms of exploration of how recession is comparatively coped with between the genders.
A number of researchers have returned to previous studies in view of recession. Atkinson’s study (2013) returns to his 2010–11- intensive qualitative work with 29 families in Bristol. His findings undermine the class-leveling, gendered argument made by O’Loughlin et al’s study. Instead he finds how individuals understanding of recession is determined by a combination of class and occupational resources which render the future as – controllable, uncontrollable, precarious, or reasonably controllable. Leicht and Fitzgerald (2014) expanded their 2007 study of over-55 Americans Post-Industrial Peasants in light of the crash. They find that at a time of increased low income and job security for this group, the ‘work until I die’ ethos rises because of the unaffordability of retirement. In this they see neoliberal/neoconservative thinking has effectively ‘defined old age out of existence’ under the pretence of free market choice.
Sociologists have examined recession from a migration angle, where studies have revealed the hidden reasons behind movement (Cairns 2013; Spitzer and Piper 2014; Bygnes 2017). Cairns (2013) conducted a mixed method study of 400 undergraduates in Belfast following the crash to find a dichotomy between the high rate of the intention to migrate and low rate of substantive plans made to leave. He identifies the blocker in the dearth of the ‘‘right’ mobility enabling habitus’ to access mobility. Bygnes (2017) qualitative study by maps the highly skilled people, often already employed individuals who left Spain for Norway after 2008. These individuals distance themselves from motivations related to the crisis to retain status and avoid stigma. The concept of ‘anomie’ is used by Bygnes to understand individual motivations in relation to the national, in contrast to Cairns application of Bourdieusian mobility related to the familial. Spitzer and Piper’s (2014) study looks at the disempowered migration of female Filipino migrants returning home, identifying the gendered nature of low-wage migration caused by global recession. For this group she argues it is the ongoing impact of neoliberal globalization through ‘sustained multiple crises’ that has impacted migration, rather than the single moment in the financial crash.
Sociologists have pointed to the wider problems of neoliberalism in discussion of recession (Fraser 2013; Berry 2015). Nancy Fraser (2013) has called for a new radicalised feminism to tackle the crisis. In her critique of second-wave feminism she likens the movement to the ‘handmaiden’ of neoliberal economics on three indirect contributions: through critique of the “family wage” to legitimate “flexible capitalism”; rejecting “economism” and politicising “the personal” and the critique of welfare-state paternalism. Berry has identified the role of the media in relation to neoliberalism, in allowing the dominance of these perspectives in the media in the years 2009/10, with the result that recession: ‘was defined as a problem of public rather than private debt, which necessitated sharp cuts to public spending’ (2015:15).
The changes to individual and collective behaviour during recession have been documented (Keating et al 2013; Purdam et al 2015; Layte and Landy 2017). At the level of consumerism, Keating et al (2013) study focused on changing attitudes to consumption since the Celtic Tiger years (1995-2007) and into the Irish economic collapse. The study finds emotional and behavioural strategies to cope with these changes which stand out from existent literature: new categories of resignation, and remembrance of times past standing. Purdam et al’s (2015) UK city case study on ‘food insecurity’ highlights the diversity of individuals including professionals using food banks as a ‘last resort’ since the crash and associated feelings of shame. While Layte and Landy (2017) mixed method study looks at the temporal patterns of collective protest in Ireland during recession. They found that the height of unrest actually correlated with recovery in 2014, with unrest at its lowest during 2010. They enables a critique of the direct correlation found between material deprivation and social protest and re-focus in on contingent factors. Lim and Laurence’s study (2017) found a decline in volunteering, particularly informal types, since the recession with this more acute in regions with higher unemployment or previously economically disadvantaged. Rather than directly attributed to financial hardship, weaker ‘norms of social trust’ were discovered as the cause (Lim & Laurence 2017: 10).