Chronic Urban Trauma and the Slow Violence of Housing Dispossession
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE Urban Studies provided by Newcastle University E-Prints Chronic Urban Trauma and the Slow Violence of Housing Dispossession Journal: Urban Studies Manuscript ID CUS-302-18-03.R1 Manuscript Type: Article <b>Discipline: Please select a keyword from the following list Geography that best describes the discipline used in your paper.: World Region: Please select the region(s) that best reflect the focus of your paper. Names of individual countries, Western Europe cities & economic groupings should appear in the title where appropriate.: Major Topic: Please identify up to 5 topics that best identify Class, Community, Displacement/Gentrification, Housing, Inequality the subject of your article.: You may add up to 2 further relevant keywords of your Violence, Trauma choosing below:: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cus [email protected] Page 1 of 24 Urban Studies 1 2 3 Chronic Urban Trauma: the Slow Violence of Housing Dispossession 4 5 6 7 8 Abstract 9 This paper sets the idea of slow violence into dialogue with trauma, to understand the practice 10 11 and legitimization of the repeated damage done to certain places through state violence. Slow 12 13 violence (Nixon 2011) describes the ‘attritional lethality’ of many contemporary effects of 14 globalization. While originating in environmental humanities, it has clear relevance for urban 15 16 studies. After assessing accounts of the post-traumatic city, the paper draws insights from 17 feminist psychiatry and postcolonial analysis to develop the concept of chronic urban trauma, 18 19 as a psychological effect of violence involving an ongoing relational dynamic. Reporting 20 21 from a three-year participatory action research project on the managed decline and disposal 22 of social housing in a former coalmining village in North East England, the paper discusses 23 24 the temporal and place-based effects of slow violence. It argues that chronic urban trauma 25 26 becomes hard-wired in place, enabling retraumatisation while also remaining open to efforts 27 to heal and rebuild. 28 29 30 Keywords 31 32 Class, Community, Displacement, Gentrification, Housing, Inequality, Violence, Trauma 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cus [email protected] Urban Studies Page 2 of 24 1 2 3 “The Numbered Streets” 4 5 6 Be there for me 7 8 they told us tales as tall as trees 9 Be there for me 10 11 the breaking day is breaking me 12 13 me rent is paid, me head is laid upon the block 14 of damp and cold and numbered housing stock 15 16 17 Be there for me 18 19 for I am all alone and cold 20 21 In hungry streets 22 the rats all live on 9 days old 23 24 And if at school they say that I’m a fool 25 26 It’s just the price you pay for living poor 27 28 29 Look out to sea 30 I wish that I was out there free 31 32 Far away 33 34 from Horden’s prison colliery 35 They said they’d mend and make the houses dry 36 37 But politicians hate the miner’s cry 38 39 40 Be there for me 41 42 They say in accent loud and clear 43 that money is to make 44 45 And not for buying beer 46 47 It’s not for us but just the chosen few 48 They bite the given hand that much is true 49 50 51 Be there for me 52 53 I cannot feel the stars tonight 54 55 That glimmer in the sky 56 above the dimming light 57 58 59 60 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cus [email protected] Page 3 of 24 Urban Studies 1 2 3 Me dreams are boarded up, the people’s hands are tied 4 They will not let us live and love has died 5 6 7 8 Be there for me 9 The walls are going higher now 10 11 They’re not for me to try 12 13 And I can’t show you how 14 The day has come and gone before we speak 15 16 There is no mercy for the poor and weak 17 18 19 Be there for me 20 21 they tell us tales as tall as trees 22 Be there for me 23 24 the breaking day is breaking me 25 26 me rent is paid, me head is down and I don’t sleep 27 behind the blinds in Horden’s Numbered Streets 28 29 30 © Ribbon Road (2016), reproduced with permission. 31 32 33 34 35 Introduction 36 37 Slow violence and the city 38 39 This paper interrogates the connections between the slow violence of historical events and 40 current day processes of urban dispossession. In particular, following Nixon’s assertion that 41 42 ‘attritional catastrophes...are marked above all by displacements’ (2011: 7, my emphasis), it 43 examines the linkages between managed industrial decline and contemporary housing 44 45 dispossession under neoliberalism and austerity. Building on Till’s (2012) and Shields’ 46 47 (2012) overtures to ‘urban trauma’, and after evaluating accounts of the post-traumatic city 48 (Lahoud et al 2010), it formulates the concept of chronic urban trauma, which speaks to the 49 50 subvisible temporalities and spatialities of slow violence. The research was conducted in 51 collaboration and solidarity with local activists and artists, as recently advocated by critics of 52 53 urban political economy approaches (Kern and McLean 2017). While feminist perspectives 54 55 have long focused on everyday emotional experiences in/of the city, there has been relatively 56 little exploration of the psychoanalytical dimensions of urban processes (Bondi 1998). 57 58 59 60 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cus [email protected] Urban Studies Page 4 of 24 1 2 3 Informed by the empirical study and wider feminist and postcolonial analyses, it is argued 4 here that chronic urban trauma can be seen not only as the result of historical/contemporary 5 6 violence but as essential to sustaining both; it helps to understand how further forms of fast 7 8 and slow violence continue to be practiced and legitimated in particular locales. 9 10 11 12 The case study is a village of just over 3,000 inhabitants on the former East Durham coalfield 13 14 in North East England, the setting for the folk song reprinted above, one of a collection that 15 arose from the research collaboration (see Heslop et al forthcoming). County Durham saw 16 17 massive in-migration from 1801-1901 to service 200 coalmines sunk that century. New 18 19 villages were built around the pits to house miners and their families. By the 1930s, Horden 20 Colliery was the largest producing coalmine in Britain. Following long national strikes and 21 22 bitter controversy, it closed in 1987, part of an industrial termination that ‘represents the most 23 dramatic contemporary example of social transformation in Britain since the Second World 24 25 War’ and led to geographically concentrated severe social, economic and emotional harm 26 27 (Bennett et al 1991:1). 28 29 Horden is now part of the built up area of the town of Peterlee, situated between Sunderland 30 31 and Hartlepool. While having the characteristics of an urban area, it is far-removed from the 32 33 places that are typically the subject of analysis of housing dispossession; like most of 34 Durham’s mining villages, Horden is located on the post-industrial rural-urban fringe, is 35 36 almost exclusively white and working class, and is in little danger of gentrification. In 37 Horden, the coalmine closure has replayed in the slow managed decline of ex-miners’ social 38 39 housing and, as a coda to recent government housing policy, a moment of fast violence in 40 41 2015-16 when this housing was sold at auction. The twin concepts of slow violence and 42 chronic urban trauma described in this paper help to understand the processes taking place in 43 44 this village over the last three decades, and those in similar contexts. 45 46 47 Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence ‘occurs gradually and out of sight, [it is] a violence of 48 49 delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is 50 typically not viewed as violence at all’ (Nixon 2011: 2). Encompassing the gradual unfolding 51 52 of many contemporary effects of globalization, it builds on Galtung's (1969) structural 53 54 violence, introducing the importance of time and the growing tendency for only spectacular 55 violence to be made visible. Nixon’s focus is environmental destruction under capitalism; the 56 57 58 59 60 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cus [email protected] Page 5 of 24 Urban Studies 1 2 3 very slow or delayed repercussions of climate change, pollution and warfare decades later. A 4 number of examples in his book relate to the geographical outsourcing of harmful industries 5 6 and pollution to poorer places that typifies globalization. Hence slow violence is spatially 7 8 disproportionate and compounds uneven development, as people, places and ecosystems 9 already made vulnerable become the targets of further destructive effects of capitalism. 10 11 Central to the argument is that slow violence is often invisible, yet the scale of its brutality 12 13 towards humanity is as great or greater than sudden and spectacular events such as natural 14 hazards.