valentine - biographical narratives of encounter

Biographical Narratives of Encounter: TheSignificance of Mobility and Emplacementin Shaping Attitudes towards Difference

Gill Valentine and Joanna Sadgrove

[Paper first received, January 2013; in final form, June 2013]

Abstract

This paper is located within work in urban studies about the significance of contactwith difference as a means for reducing prejudice and achieving social change.Recent approaches, influenced by theories of affect, have emphasised non-consciouseveryday negotiations of difference in the city. In this paper it is argued that suchapproaches lose sight of the significance of the subject: of the reflective judgementsof ‘others’ made by individuals; of our ability to make decisions around the controlof our feelings and identifications; and of the significance of personal pasts and col-lective histories in shaping the ways we perceive and react to encounters. Rather, thispaper uses a biographical approach focusing on interviewees’ narratives of encoun-ter. Through its attention to processes of mobility and emplacement, it contributesto debates about when contact with difference matters by highlighting the impor-tance of everyday social normativities in the production of moral dispositions.

Keywords: emplacement, Europe, Geography, mobility, social group

Introduction

Difference is a hallmark of contemporarycities. The size and density of urban popula-tions mean that they are sites of encounterwhere all different sorts of people arebrought together. Hence the question ofhow we develop the capacity to live with

difference and overcome intolerance isincreasingly at the heart of attempts tounderstand urban life. The contact hypoth-esis is a foundational theory for addressingand reducing prejudice. It originates fromthe work of Gordon Allport who recognised

Gill Valentine is in the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Winter Street, Sheffield,S10 2TN, UK. Email: [email protected].

Joanna Sadgrove is at Us–Research, 47–51 Great Suffolk Street, London, SE1 0BS, UK. Email:[email protected]

Article51(9) 1979–1994, July 2014

0042-0980 Print/1360-063X Online� 2013 Urban Studies Journal Limited

DOI: 10.1177/0042098013504142

the potential of bringing people from vari-ous groups together in ways that mightdevelop mutual concern and respect.Allport (1954) identified optimum condi-tions for such contact between groups to beeffective including: the necessity for partici-pants to have a sense of equal status and acommon purpose or activity; for theengagement to be realistic rather than artifi-cial; as well as for such encounters to havethe sustained support of the wider commu-nity (including authorities, law or custom)within which they occur. Subsequentresearch in social psychology (for example,Pettigrew, 1998) has further explored howpositive social relations might be achieved.This body of research has suggested thatcontact works by enabling people to learnabout ‘others’ which can change negative orstereotypical views; by generating friend-ships across social difference; and byencouraging majority groups to reappraisetheir social ‘norms’ and to be more under-standing and inclusive of minorities. It hascontinued to be important in social psy-chology despite being criticised for focusingon prejudice primarily as antipathy andconsequently not recognising it is manifestin qualitatively different forms (Dovidioet al., 2005) and for neither recognising thecomplexity of individuals’ intersectionalidentities, nor the potential for intolerancewithin/between minority as well as majoritycommunities (Valentine, 2010).

Although relatively neglected in urbanstudies, geography and sociology the signif-icance of ‘contact’ in fostering interethnicrelations has begun to emerge in recentthinking about community cohesion, cos-mopolitanism and geographies of encoun-ter. Most notably, Amin’s (2002) reflectionson strategies for community cohesion—following racial tensions and violence inUK cities at the turn of the millennium—resonate with Allport’s contact hypothesis.He ascribes managed interactions between

different ethnic groups, predicated onexchange around common interests, withthe potential to produce moments ofcultural destabilisation that allow partici-pants to establish new intercultural under-standings. Examples of what Amin terms‘micro-publics’—might include urbansites such as libraries, community centresand allotments.

Beyond such work about specific sites ofmanaged interactions between groups, thebasic premise that encounters offer the pos-sibility for new understandings and socialchange to occur is evident in wider contem-porary writing about the city. Here, a strandof interdisciplinary research on urbanencounters has highlighted the potential foreveryday contact in public spaces of multi-cultural cities (for example, cafes, markets,parks and public transport) to produce cos-mopolitan sensibilities and competencies asa by-product of socially diverse individualsrubbing along together as they go abouttheir normal lives (Laurier and Philo, 2006;Sandercock, 1998; Watson, 2009). It has itsroots in a long tradition of social sciencescholarship about ‘everyday life’ includingthe seminal work of Elias (2000) on civilityand Goffman (1967) on dramaturgy.

Unlike managed interactions betweengroups, the pre-conditions for Allport’scontact hypothesis are rarely met in every-day urban encounters between individuals.Recent work has begun to trouble assump-tions that banal everyday contact and infor-mal acts of care or civility in urban publicspace necessarily equate with respect for dif-ference to suggest that individuals can sepa-rate out their moral beliefs (for example, interms of our shared understandings of howwe should live, who is good or bad, how weshould treat others/be treated by them)from their personal conduct (Watson, 2006;Valentine, 2008). For example, researchwith religious groups about their attitudestowards homosexuality has demonstrated

1980 GILL VALENTINE AND JOANNA SADGROVE

that the ‘what is’ (i.e. personal experience offriendship) for both heterosexual and les-bian and gay people of faith is prioritisedover theological perspectives of ‘what oughtto be’ (religious belief that homosexuality isa sin/abomination) (Valentine and Waite,2012). And in a study of urban encountersbetween residents who are White and immi-grants of colour in small US towns Leitner(2012) observes that White residentsexpressed fears, annoyance and discomfortassociated with difference as well asmoments of reflection and change.

Such work has also begun to acknowledgethat positive experiences of encounter in onespatial context may not generalise or carryover into others (Leitner, 2012; Valentine,2008; Valentine and Sadgrove, 2012). It hasquestioned the primary focus on urbanpublic spaces as sites of encounter, callingfor more attention to be paid to the potentialsignificance of both ‘private’ and institu-tional spaces where individuals’ understand-ings of difference are negotiated andcontested (Hemming, 2011; Valentine andSadgrove, 2012) as well as recognising thatcontact zones are not only embodied rela-tionships in specific time–spaces but are alsometaphorical; part of our socio-spatial ima-gineries (Yeoh and Willis, 2005). Indeed,there has been a more general neglect ofhow individuals approach and experienceencounters and their subjective reflectionson the meaning of such moments for them.Rather, the influence of the ‘affective turn’ ingeography in particular, has focused atten-tion on the orientation of bodies towards oraway from each other to produce particularaffective atmospheres in a given moment.This has been primarily understood throughobservational research of the habitual non-conscious performances and micro social-ities of everyday negotiations of difference inthe city (for example, Laurier and Philo,2006; Wilson, 2011).

Yet, such approaches lose sight of the sig-nificance of the subject: of the reflective jud-gements of ‘others’ made by individuals; ofour ability to make decisions or choicesaround the control of our feelings, relation-ships and identifications; of the significanceof personal pasts and the collective historiesof the communities within which we areembedded in shaping the ways that differentindividuals perceive and react to encounters;and of the potential for particular contactswith difference to become ‘fateful moments’(Giddens, 1991) that produce an intentionalrecasting of the self in the future or to fail toendure beyond the moment. Swanton’s(2010) research in a northern UK mill town,examining how social differentiation is per-formed through assemblages of bodies,things and spaces, has suggested that historymatters and more precisely that raced mem-ories and affects accumulate. He argues that

newspaper stories, past experiences, gossip,

micro-political baggage and rumour are sedi-

mented in layers of virtual memory imma-

nent to each moment of encounter (Swanton,

2010, p. 459).

Yet, in making this argument, Swantondraws on fragments of a range of recon-structed events retold in informal inter-views, conversations and the media ratherthan providing an in-depth examination ofindividuals’ personal histories and the waysthat memories of particular encountersshape values and attitudes.

This paper responds to these criticisms byadopting a biographical approach to explorethe spatial and temporal contexts anddynamics through which individuals’ preju-dices are developed, challenged or interrupted

Perception is never a mere contact of the

mind with the object present; it is impreg-

nated with memory images which complete

it as they interpret it (Bergson, 1911, p. 170).

BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES OF ENCOUNTER 1981

Specifically, we argue that, contrary to cur-rent orthodoxies which read encounters offmomentary bodily orientations, encounterswith and across difference can only beunderstood when analysed within the con-text of an individual’s life-story. We arguethat the strength of biographical narrativemethods is the dynamism of memory inmaking temporal connections (see alsoValentine and Sadgrove, 2012). It is thebiographical past—memories, associations,histories, experiences—that contributes toorientating bodies in the present. Howencounters with difference are shaped by,and shape, attitudes towards the othermust be contextualised within a biographi-cal understanding of what it is that individ-uals carry from their pasts into the momentof encounter and their reflective judge-ments of the meaning of these experiences.

The past 20 years have witnessed a pro-liferation of scholarly attention to the roleof biographical narrative methods in thesocial sciences (see Peacock and Holland,1993; Somers, 1994). Inspired by the 20th-century shift in attention to narrative formwithin the humanities, social science workhas moved beyond concerns with the repre-sentational aspects of narrative and narra-tivity to reconceptualise them as

Concepts of social epistemology and social

ontology [which] posit that it is through nar-

rativity that we come to know, understand

and make sense of the social worlds, and it is

through narratives and narrativity that we

constitute our social identities . all of us

come to be who we are . by being located or

locating ourselves in social narratives rarely of

our own making (Somers, 1994, p. 606).

Narratives, as conceived by Somers, becomeways of linking social ontology with thesocial constitution of identity by revealingsomething of the complex and shifting pro-cesses through which individuals narrate

themselves, and their experiences in relationto the multiple (structural) narratives pro-vided by society. Narratives, it is argued,constitute identity by requiring that individ-uals interpret themselves through particularstories that construct racialised, genderedand classed subjects. Yet equally, the tellingof stories and use of narrative methods byindividuals allows for counter-narratives toemerge and be articulated—evidencing theways in which individual biographies mightboth antagonise or invoke structural narra-tives at different points and for differentends. Methodologically, this rendering ofindividual respondents as both agents andsubjects provides unique evidence of thecomplex tensions and frustrations which,we argue, can be seen to shape prejudicialattitudes towards others.

Biographical narrative interviews andoral histories are perceived as particularlyuseful in enhancing understandings aboutthe situated and relational nature of people’sidentities, attitudes and values (Somers,1994). Within the context of a study on pre-judice, biographical methods provide aunique type of evidence as to when andwhere prejudices are shaped, reinforced andinterrupted. By paying attention to individ-ual life-stories, we can better understandhow prejudices unfold over time, when andhow they become entrenched and whereand why they are destabilised.

This analytical process necessitates anengagement with individuals’ understand-ings of their relationship to place. Materialspaces matter because they bring peopletogether in a location where abstract dis-courses and positionings in diffuse socialnetworks become outworked as tangible,sedimented social relations through collec-tive imaginaries and the production ofcommunity normativities (unspoken rules/codes of behaviour) and forms of regula-tion. Here, we use the term emplacementto describe the way in which individuals


narrate their values and attitudes (past,present and sometimes future) as a productof such solidified configurations.

At the same time, we also reflect on indi-viduals’ accounts of their mobility (literaland metaphorical) when they have encoun-tered different normativities and understandtheir moral dispositions to have changed.The telling of a biographical narrative allowsaccess to the ways in which certain socialperformances take precedence over others atdifferent times and in different places/spaces. Accounts of these shifting social per-formances often emerge as people narratechanges in their contexts. Examples includemoving to a new workplace, moving to anew country or encountering new institu-tional frameworks—such as by entering fur-ther education. Each of these experiences ofphysical and/or social mobility draws peopleinto contact with new attitudes, values andmethods of discursive policing—such asequality and diversity legislation or socio-cultural norms deemed to be ‘acceptable’.Whilst this may not enable us to posit thedissolving of prejudices, such accounts doreveal important evidence about the impactof discursive policing.

The proliferation of writing on the chal-lenges and limitations of narrative methods(for example, the extent to which rulesabout ‘acceptable’ stories are culturally dic-tated and can encourage closed or coherentnarratives; the fact that narratives areaccounts of what people say they do,not evidence of their actual practices andproblems of omissions from life-stories)illuminates the profound challenges ofinterpreting and analysing life-story evi-dence. Whilst we recognise these limitations(see also Sandelowski, 1991), we also arguethat life-story methods allow new insightsinto how individuals’ moral values and atti-tudes towards difference change to producenew subjectivities and new social perfor-mances around difference. In adopting this

approach, we understand narrative inter-views to be a process of meaning making, awindow on the dynamics of respondents’experiences and emotional lives, ratherthan a presumed reality (Bruner, 1990). Weacknowledge that how the self is narratedmay differ according to the specific perfor-mative encounter between a given respon-dent and interviewer at the particularmoment and in the specific situational con-text of the interview. The interviewer, inother words, is not merely the passive reci-pient of the narrative but an active, author-ial agent. Likewise, a self that is producedfrom an interview is a product of the narra-tion, not the source of it. We thereforefollow Peacock and Holland (1993) inusing the term life-story to describe thisresearch process because it does not implythat the narration is ‘truth’ or ‘fact’ butrather communicates the way that inter-views are precarious sense-making devicesthat can help to make experiences intelligi-ble (Weick, 1995).

The research upon which this paper isbased involved 60 individual case studies(n = 120 interviews) as part a EuropeanResearch Council funded research pro-gramme, Living with Difference. Each casecomprises a time-line, a life-story interview,an audio diary of everyday encounters, asemi-structured interview about attitudestowards difference and an interview reflect-ing on the emerging findings. Here, we areinterested in multiple forms of social differ-entiation (gender, age, race, class, sexualorientation, disability, religion and belief,etc.) in contrast to the literature aroundprejudice/encounters which has a tendencyprimarily to view these issues through thelens of race and racism. The informantswere recruited from amongst respondentsto a survey about prejudice in Leeds, UK(see Piekut et al., 2012). They were sampledto include those from a range of social back-grounds (in terms of socioeconomic status,


occupation, gender, ethnicity, religious/belief, sexual orientation and (dis)ability);whose personal circumstances and lifestyleaffords them a range of opportunities for/experiences of encountering ‘difference’;and to reflect the range of responses to theprejudice survey.

In response to criticisms that researchabout prejudice commonly focuses on theattitudes of the majority population, herewe draw on the life-stories of two infor-mants, both currently resident in Leeds:first, a White, working-class man in his 30s(Craig); and, in the following section, aMuslim woman of Pakistani origin in her40s (Amirah). Both sections focus on keyexamples of meaningful ‘contact with dif-ference’ that were identified by the intervie-wees which they narrate as having an affectin shaping their understandings of, and atti-tudes towards, ‘difference’. We draw ontheir self-reflections about how they havemade choices around the control of theirfeelings, self-identifications and approachesto future relationships, as well as our ownreadings of slippages and contradictions intheir accounts. All the quotations includedin this paper are verbatim. Ellipsis dots areused to indicate minor edits that have beenmade to clarify the readability of quota-tions. Information is sometimes added insquare brackets to clarify to what the inter-viewee is referring (i.e. from the precedingconversation) when this is not explicit inthe specific extract quoted. The word [edit]is used to signify that a significant sectionof text has been removed. The names attrib-uted to speakers are pseudonyms.

Craig: A Narrative of Attitudestowards Minority Ethnic Groups

Craig recounts his childhood as one charac-terised by social, emotional and materialdisadvantage. Following the death of his

father when he was a child and his mother’sremarriage to an abusive new partner, hefound himself taking premature responsi-bility for caring for his younger siblings andstep-siblings.

Craig grew up on an economically mar-ginalised housing estate in Leeds. The urbancommunity he was emplaced within, likemany poor White neighbourhoods, wascharacterised by a culture of prejudice andintolerance towards minorities as a defen-sive desire to maintain local culture, tradi-tion and identity in the face of processes ofcounter-modernisation. It has long been anactive recruiting group for the right-wing,anti-immigration groups such as the BritishNational Party. During Craig’s youth, thisantagonism towards ‘minorities’ was alsoreflected in the local football team which inthe 1970s and 1980s was known for theaggressive nature of the team’s style of playon the pitch as well as the hyper-masculi-nity and racially targeted hooliganism of itsfans.

Craig’s first memories of encounteringracial difference were at school and at foot-ball matches with his friends. As the quota-tion (see later) implies, he was part of adominant peer group that was racist. Theanti-school culture of resistance he describesresonates with Willis’ (1977) Learning toLabour: How Working Class Kids GetWorking Class Jobs. In this seminal study,Willis argued that, having observed theirown parents’ working in menial jobs, youngmen from working-class communitiesanticipate futures circumscribed by thesame limited employment opportunitiesand so come to regard education as bothirrelevant and often a humiliating experi-ence. As a consequence, they produce ananti-school, hyper-masculine culture ofresistance in which membership of, andstatus within, the peer group is more impor-tant to their self-worth and sense of identitythan academic achievement. Their


subsequent educational failure ensures thatthey unintentionally reproduce their classposition. In Craig’s case, the peer culture oftoughness he was emplaced within mobilisedaggression towards minorities inside andoutside the classroom, reflecting processes ofothering and scapegoating evident in theadult community. His loyalty to, and partici-pation in, his peer group gave him emotionalrelease and a sense of identity and belongingin a wider context of insecurity and injustice.In this sense, Craig’s racism might be under-stood as a pre-reflexive, routine orientationto the world produced through his embodiedexperiences of everyday life. Drawing onBourdieu’s (1990) concept of habitus—internalised dispositions that are theproduct of socialisation—Sayer (2005)argues that this concept can be used toaddress ethical matters, observing that indi-viduals also have instant moral responses(including emotions such as anger, bitter-ness, compassion, etc.) towards others/situa-tions prior to reflection

There were a lot of racism around school . I

mean the lads I were at school with, it were

all football-related and they were United fans

. so there was a lot of violence and racism

in the ’70s which they’d been brought up in

that environment all their lives . and it car-

ried on over into school. I mean I remember

we had a teacher Mr Pinder . and he were

actually Indian. The guys in our science class

they always used to just rip into him and call

him Paki and things like that. And because I

wanted to be in with the in-crowd . you

had to do it. Racism on the terraces, vio-

lence, it were all there . it’s fine, it’s the

norm, everybody’s doing it . I enjoyed it, it

gave me an outlet . you know, I’d built up

all this aggression . I were able to be myself

and spill out . I had to follow what every-

one else was doing [edit]. The BNP [British

National Party] . were posting literature

through the door. And if they saw you in the

street they’d talk to you ask you to go to

meetings and things like that.

Yet, in acknowledging the significance ofCraig’s early moral disposition towards‘others’ as a product of his emplacement ina particular community, this is not to sug-gest that such early experiences are determi-nistic and necessarily orientate futureactions. Rather, individuals can reflect ontheir own lives and encounters and chooseto change or react to wider urban socialrelations in new ways such that they pro-duce and embody new dispositions. ForCraig, the literal and social mobility of gain-ing employment in a call-centre—a mun-dane cosmopolitan environment—broughthim into contact with colleagues who werelesbian and gay and from different ethnic,and religious backgrounds, which causedhim to reflect intentionally on his encoun-ters with, and attitudes towards, ‘differ-ence’. Allport (1954) himself identified theworkplace as providing the optimum char-acteristics for his contact hypothesis to besuccessful because it brings different peopletogether around a shared activity in a con-text where such encounters have the sus-tained support of the institution in whichthey occur. His research (and subsequentstudies) has shown that such contact worksbecause individuals learn about differencewhich corrects any negative views or stereo-types they hold; it can generate affective tiessuch as friendships and produce attitudinalchange by causing individuals to be self-reflective about their understanding of theirown and others’ place in the world. AsCraig describes, his employment changedhis usage of space, emplacing him in a newcontext populated by different people andgoverned by different normativities. Indeed,in his new employment, he became a tradeunion representative and undertook equal-ity and diversity training. (See Wilson,2013, for an account of how diversity


workshops which challenge prejudical atti-tudes can produce positive change.) It alsorepresented a movement across social spacethat enabled him to ‘become someone else’as he reflected on his own social/ethicalpractices and changed his moral dispositiontowards ‘others’.

When I started work at a call centre . the

people that worked [there] . you had

Muslim, Indian, homosexual, both men and

women . it’s the most cosmopolitan place

of work because its in the city centre . It’s

at work I’ve learnt more about religion and

cultures. When I first started . the induc-

tion group that I was in . was quite a

varied group and we had to work together

. my team leader, she was gay. Then there

were two Muslim girls and a Muslim boy

and then there were a couple of Indians, and

one half-cast [sic] lad and me and a White

girl . We were the minority within our

team . I mean they bring so many different

things to the table . I got to find out stuff

about different countries, different religions

and backgrounds. And it was a positive thing

for me . I could come home and I could

pass it onto my kids . There’s a lot of them

now who are my friends . Now I want to

experience as many different cultures as pos-

sible, I want to learn as much as there is out

there . I’ve actually got a book on how to

teach yourself Urdu . I think it would be a

good language to learn going forward .working in the job I work in, we deal with

places like Bangalore and Chennai so we

speak to a lot of people who are Urdu speak-

ing. [edit] For me going to work and

working with such a diverse set of people,

that’s what changed my views . It’s got

me to where I am now from where I

was because we’re in a society where we’ve

got to live together . I think its made me a

better person working with people from dif-

ferent backgrounds, nationalities and

religions.

Yet, Craig’s account is not a simple linearnarrative of transformation from holdingprejudiced views to a more progressive orcosmopolitan disposition. Rather, over thecourse of the multiple stages of the casestudy research, Craig expressed a concernthat, despite experiencing the privilege ofbeing White, middle-aged and male, hehimself experienced prejudice. Recallingbeing passed over for a job because he hastattoos and piercings, Craig articulated anarrative of injustice about the rights andprotection afforded to minority groupscompared with what he perceives to be hisown vulnerability to discrimination and hisown lack of representation from political orcultural organisations. It is a narrative ofbeing misrecognised or disrespected thathas its roots in his emplaced class identity.

I’ve got piercings and tattoos and things like

that. So I went to drop off some appraisal

documents . for the lady who were doing

the interview. I went to the interview, didn’t

get the job, when I asked for feedback and she

actually said to me ‘I didn’t want to interview

you because of the way you looked’ . I think

not just equality laws but a lot of laws have

gone too far . for me I have nothing—if I’m

getting victimised at work basically all I can

do is raise a grievance for harassment but

there’s no specific grounds, no specific terms.

Whereas for a woman you’ve got sexism,

somebody of an ethnic minority you have got

colour, they’ve also got religious background

that you can go on. I’m just out there on a

limb and it’s me that’s helping keep this coun-

try ticking over. It’s me that goes to work

everyday to make a living. I’ve no protection

within work . There is no ism. I’m 34, White,

middle-aged, working class. I’ve nothing when

you look at it that way. There’s no protection

for us . You’re doing your damn best for

your wife and your kids and to keep the coun-

try going by going to work and paying taxes

but you feel like you’re being shit on from a


great height. It’s hard sometimes for us because

we’re just the forgotten minority.

Although, Craig represents himself ashaving no ‘ism’, he is in effect describingclass prejudice that resonates with hisemplaced childhood experience of growingup in a disadvantaged neighbourhood andwhich echoes previous accounts of Whiteworking-class urban communities (forexample, Hewitt, 2005) in which percep-tions of both unfairness and cultural injus-tice have been a response to rapid processesof detraditionalisation and individualisa-tion in the context of new modernity.Notably, the global demand for flexiblelabour and the impact of the contemporaryfinancial crisis have reverberated throughthe employment structure producing risinglevels of redundancy, an increased emphasison short-term contracts and part-timework which in turn have created chronicjob insecurity. Hence, the claim that WhiteBritons are now second-class citizens intheir own country is a discourse used bythe British National Party to recruit in dis-advantaged neighbourhoods (Ford andGoodwin, 2010).

Here, Craig’s feelings of ontological inse-curity in a context of economic uncertaintyare not explicitly narrated in terms of race asthey were expressed during his past, perhapsmirroring the evidence of other studieswhich suggest that minority ethnic groupsare now increasingly accepted as part of amulticultural society (for example, Finneyand Peach, 2004). Rather, ‘the others’ thathe perceives to threaten his way of life in thepresent are narrated in more abstract termsas immigrants, including White migrantsfrom eastern Europe, as well as asylum-see-kers who are perceived to receive preferen-tial treatment compared with native Britons.In this sense, the racism of his youth isreplaced by a more xenophobic fear of stran-gers. In his account, Craig represents

immigrants as a needy group who are receiv-ing welfare support despite the fact manycome with the specific intention to work; atthe same time, he also blames their perceiveddependency for encouraging British youngpeople to chose a life of welfare benefits overemployment. His argument implicitly mobi-lises a Protestant work ethic which datesback to the first age of industrial capitalism.Sennett (2003) argues that it was in thisperiod that the moral value of work and theconsequent fear of being unproductive anddependent became ingrained in society.Subsequently, the characterisation of thosewho do not or who are unable to work inpaid employment, as socially and morallyseparate from the hard-working majoritypopulation, has become a recurrent publicdiscourse in the UK (Valentine and Harris,under review).

Immigration—I’m frightened to death that

my boys are not going to be able to get into

whatever they want to get into . For me

immigration’s me biggest pet hate because

we should start looking after ourselves at

home before we’re looking after everybody

else. With the riots, when they were saying

it’s because they wanted to lash out at the

police, it’s not. It’s because you’re a lazy ass

and you want everything given to you . the

Government’s modelled that for our youth

because they see immigrants coming in and

getting the houses, the social handouts so

they think well if they can do it why can’t I

do it . It’s like the people that are on bene-

fits, to me, they’ve got more disposable

income than I have because I pay my mort-

gage, my council tax, my rates . We’re

looking for somebody to blame . The eco-

nomic downturn we’re blaming immigrants.

Moreover, Craig is currently in a good job.His xenophobia is not therefore narrated interms of his own present employmentposition, but rather is expressed through


future-orientated worries for his sons.Children and childhood are commonlymobilised as symbols or emblems of thefuture (Bingham et al., 1999). By evokingthem in this way, Craig is implicitly expres-sing a fear of a loss of privilege (as White andmale) in competition with ‘strangers’ andhis own sense of powerlessness in a contextof unprecedented mobility and urban socialchange. This could perhaps be read as whatAllport (1954) terms ‘attitude regression’where individuals slip back into previousways of thinking over time. However, Craighas a genuine commitment to multicultural-ism and embracing other ways of living. Hedoes not see the connection between the col-leagues he has everyday contact with at work(some of whom are first- or second-genera-tion immigrants to the UK) and the abstractmetaphorical ‘folk devil’—the immigrant—that troubles his socio-spatial imagination.Immigrants in his account are largely disem-bodied and unacculturated. They are framedby Craig entirely in relation to their per-ceived dependency and his perception ofhimself as deserving/needing, but not receiv-ing support. In this sense, internalised eco-nomic insecurities and a feeling of injusticefrom Craig’s past emplacement haunt hisperceptions of his own and his children’sfutures. While he has intentionally reflectedon, and changed his past attitude towards,minority ethnic groups as a consequence ofhis socioeconomic mobility (i.e. gaining ajob) and concomitant positive encounters inthe workplace, fear and resentment generatedby a narrative of past and future economicinsecurity harbour a xenophobia that hedirects at an abstract target.

Amirah: A Narrative of Attitudestowards Disability and SexualOrientation

Amirah was born and grew up in Pakistan‘not too poor, not too rich’ in what she

describes as a fairly stratified society on thebasis of occupation. Her father, a business-man with his own shop, had fought for theBritish in World War II, an exposure which,according to Amirah, made him value edu-cation and he encouraged his daughters togo to university. Pakistan is a profoundlyreligious society in which ultimately lawand rights and meaning in life are widelybelieved to derive from Allah. Children arethought to be born not so much as individ-uals with personal rights, but as part of anextended family network within a widercommunity of mutual duty and obligation.Amirah was raised in Islam, which shedescribes as ‘very important’ to under-standing the family, the ways in which rela-tionships between men and women areconstructed and managed, and in shapingher attitudes and values

there used to be mosque people like mullahs

and things . you felt like they’re the most

right people because they’ve got the knowl-

edge, like priests you can say. So you actually

believe whatever they are saying . They can

tell you something and you thought because

they’re in the mosque they have to be right.

That’s all they do, this is their job, they’re

reading books and they’re talking about

something, it’s got to be right.

In the context of her emplaced childhood,Amirah’s first memories of encounters withdifference were in an intrafamilial context asher older sister had a physical impairment asa consequence of having polio. Yet, despitethis intimate contact with ‘difference’,Amirah narrates herself as having littleempathy for disabled people during herchildhood and early adulthood. She attri-butes this both to the cultural belief systemsof the community in which she was raisedand to her personal familial relationships.

The concept of disability is not evident inthe Qur’an, although there is a theoretical


equality of all before Allah, and the Qur’ancalls on Muslims to recognise the disadvan-taged and to improve their circumstances(Maysaa et al., 2012; Miles, 1983). However,a lack of awareness and education about dis-ability among the general public (particu-larly associated with high levels of illiteracy)means that misconceptions and inconside-rate attitudes are commonplace in Pakistan(Miles, 1983). Indeed, disability is popularlyseen as a curse or punishment from Allahand is sometimes associated with invasionby an evil spirit. During the 1980s–1990s,the UN Decade of the Disabled, General Zia-ul-Haq, who had a daughter with multipledisabilities, sought to improve the welfare ofdisabled children by establishing specialeducation centres in Pakistan. However,most services for those with disabilities arelocated in urban areas with little or no provi-sion for those in remote areas. As a result,many disabled people live in poor condi-tions with a lack of access to basic needs orrehabilitation services, with the provision ofsupport and care perceived as a wider com-munity duty and obligation, rather thanbeing an individual right laid down by thestate.

Amirah believes that the negative atti-tude towards disability she held during herearly adulthood was informed by the treat-ment of her older sister in their communitywhere, even within their extended family,her sister was not considered acceptable foran arranged marriage. In seminal work onstigma, Goffman (1963) famously arguedthat this is a process by which ‘the reactionof others spoils normal identities’. ForAmirah, the stigma of her sister’s disabilityalso threatened her own identity. In thissense, like Craig’s racism, Amirah’s disab-lism represents a pre-reflexive, routineorientation to the world produced throughher everyday lived experience in a specificemplaced context governed by particularsocial and cultural normativities.

We don’t do things [in Pakistan] that we do

here [UK] . It’s the parents who normally

choose and decide and what’s happening and

things . .My parents tried a lot [to find a

husband for her disabled sister]. My dad

asked around and things. Then people come

home as well and talk to her and things and

they never come back second time. They

came one time and after meeting her they

didn’t want to go ahead . It’s just society

doesn’t accept these things.

Amirah’s negative disposition towards dis-ability was further compounded by siblingjealousy within the family. She recalls thather sister was favoured by her motherbecause of her perceived vulnerability, andher consequent envy of the closeness of theirrelationship further tempered her attitudetowards disability. In this sense, Amirah’snarrates her reaction to her disabled sister asa form of incipient prejudice: a resentmenttowards an ‘innocent’ person who is per-ceived to be more privileged—in this case interms of maternal love (Allport, 1954). Byillogically blaming her sister for her personalsense of emotional deprivation, Amirahrecognises that she projected her sense ofresentment onto the group that her sisterrepresented: disabled people.

When Amirah was 21 she had anarranged marriage and moved fromPakistan to live with her husband’s family inthe UK. She gave birth to a son with severelearning disabilities who relies on Amirahfor very basic levels of care. Indeed, she isconcerned that he will never be able to liveindependently. Being a mother to a childwith special needs challenged Amirah’sreceived attitudes towards disability. In thissense, the birth of her son was akin toGiddens’ (1991, p. 113) notion of a ‘‘fatefulmoment’’—‘‘a phase at which things arewrenched out of joint’’ and where individu-als are called on to reflect on their lives andtake decisions that are consequential for


their futures. In Amirah’s case, her son’sarrival interrupted her previously heldbeliefs and values; it was a reflectivemoment which led her to rethink her ownand others’ reactions to her sister and torecast intentionally her moral dispositiontowards disability. Whereas Craig’s desire toprotect his sons’ future was narrated to jus-tify his xenophobia, an intimate encounterwith difference through motherhood wasnarrated by Amirah as revealing to her theprejudice disabled people encounter as shereflected on her sister’s past and her son’sprojected future. In this sense, Amirah’saccount is evidence of Allport’s argumentthat ‘‘contact must reach below the surfaceto be effective in altering prejudice’’(Allport, 1954/1979, p. 276).

On that time [childhood/early adulthood], I

didn’t realise it [disablism] when I was in

that. Because I was younger than her [her

disabled sister], it’s different . when I had

my son, then things start coming to me. I

start remembering those things and I just

thought ‘oh god, I don’t want him to be like

that. I don’t want him to end up—I want

him to do well in his life’ and things like

that. I was trying to find help then, what

can I do, how can I help.

Migrating to the UK had already emplacedAmirah into a new spatial context governedby different normativities, notably legal rec-ognition of disabled people’s rights (not-withstanding disabled people’s frequent lesspositive lived experiences of citizenship).The reaction of the Pakistani communitytowards disability led Amirah to turn to herBritish neighbours for support. They advisedand supported her to access social servicesfor her son which further oriented hertowards the majority community. In thisway, Amirah’s mobility, both literal (interms of migrating to the UK) and social (interms of having a disabled son and engaging

in a new community), has reshaped her atti-tudes towards disability.

My son, I realise there’s something wrong

with him, I couldn’t talk to anybody Pakistani

about it because I knew what kind of response

I will have. So I talked to my English friends,

my neighbours . I had a very good response

from them, their attitudes towards it and gui-

dance. They actually even guided me where I

can look things up. That really appeals to me

because in Pakistan and even here as well

people got some disability the attitude is very

narrow-minded you can say. It’s very rough

and rude towards disabled people, which

actually hurts. English people’s attitude is

very sympathetic towards disability people,

that’s really good, that appeals to you . Him

being special needs I’m always involved with

the British people. Statement going through,

form filling, teachers, they’re lovely.

The decision to register her son as disabledalienated Amirah from her mother-in-lawwho was fearful that this would lead to theirstigmatisation and shame within the localPakistani community

It’s just [Pakistani] society doesn’t accept

these things. There’s still sometimes they act

silly about it, because when I had my son .he was about two years old when I found he’s

special needs. My mother-in-law, she was

saying it to me ‘Why are you saying that he’s

special, why are you taking him to hospital, are

you going to label him?’. I said ‘Hang on, you

listen to me. I labelled him and that’s the way

he’ll get help, he’ll get support and he’ll get

better. If I don’t take him to see anyone, any

doctors . he won’t get any help at all. How is

he going to manage then if he’s not getting any

support . you tell me for that’. [Mother-in-

law] ‘Yes but what will people say?’. I say ‘I

don’t give a damn about what other people

say, he’s my son and I’m his mother and this is

how am I going to deal with it!’.


Negotiating educational and social provi-sion for her son brought Amirah into con-tact with a wider range of people andinstitutions than she would have otherwiseencountered in her daily life. One of thosewhom Amirah describes as a huge supportis the head teacher at his school. When theteacher required an operation, Amirahwent to see her in hospital. During her visitshe read a ‘get well soon card’ and in doingso, unintentionally discovered that theteacher is a lesbian.

Initially, Amirah was surprised andupset given that in her faith (as in manyothers) homosexuality is understood to beunnatural, sinful and more specifically a‘Western’ disease that threatens the reli-giously prescribed natural order (notwith-standing that some Imams have started toquestion what sexual practices are forbid-den and how strictly these are regulatedand publications are beginning to emergethat challenge traditional interpretations ofIslamic texts; see Yip, 2005).

I see people as their personality. I don’t

bother about what they’re doing in their per-

sonal life, that’s my personal point of view. I

don’t approve it, I wouldn’t approve it, if

somebody asked my opinion I will tell them

this is wrong, you’re not supposed to do

that. But—it’s their business, it’s not your

business . that’s from Islamic principles,

you don’t put your nose everywhere. Because

our head teacher at school, who actually

helped me a lot with my son’s statement she

was really nice . she was a lesbian, that

didn’t bother me. . The first time I knew

and I was really surprised and shocked. But

after a while it went away because she kept

that totally away from the school. She was a

great person, she lifted up the school, she

put a lot of effort into school with the chil-

dren and education-wise . that was a really

good thing. You shouldn’t be put off by

what she’s doing in her personal life.

Because of the high regard in which Amirahholds the teacher as a professional, she con-sciously worked to find space within herinterpretation of Islam to accommodate thisknowledge and accept her as an individual.She did this by compartmentalising sexualityas a privatised rather than a public practice,observing that what occurs within the homeis not the concern of Islam, rather statingthat homosexuality is only problematicwhen it is damaging to wider community orsocial relationships (citing the example of agay man who abused children in the com-munity and her hostility towards gay mar-riage and adoption). In this sense, whileAmirah narrates the intimate contact ofmothering a disabled child as the cause of achange in her attitude towards all disabledpeople, positive contact with this lesbianteacher has not brought a similar transfor-mation in her attitude towards lesbians andgay men as a social group. She still holds anegative attitude towards homosexualityand continues to be opposed to variousforms of equality on the grounds of sexualorientation. Rather, she has in effect decate-gorised the head teacher, treating her as anindividual such that her sexuality is given nowider salience

For example about the gays. I think it’s

wrong. It shouldn’t—especially about these

gay marriages—it shouldn’t be allowed.

They’re allowed to adopt kids and have kids.

It won’t be a good impression on kids when

they grow up. They’ll be wondering why I’ve

got two dads and why I’ve got two mums,

and why I don’t have a mum and dad and

things. That’s no good.

In this way, Amirah’s account demonstratesthat, while we can chose how we manageour feelings in relation to the reflective jud-gements we make about other individualswith whom we have contact in everydaylife, for such contact to change our


attitudes towards the group they representwe must rethink our routine emplacementsor orientation to the world. This requires awillingness to embrace new wider socialnormativities and to develop new moraldispositions rather than merely to stretchcontaining narratives in an elastic way toaccommodate exceptional individuals.

Reflections on Narratives ofEncounter: The Significance ofMobility and Emplacement

Debates in urban studies about prejudicereduction, social cohesion and morerecently cosmopolitanism have focused onthe significance of contact in bringingpeople together. In particular, the emphasisof recent work has been on the use ofobservational techniques to study the urbansites of encounter where such destabilisa-tion and transformations are presumed totake place. However, we have argued in thispaper that such approaches lose sight of thesignificance of the subject: of the reflectivejudgements of ‘others’ made by individualsand the relevance of personal pasts and thecollective histories of the communitieswithin which we are emplaced in shapingthe meaningfulness and durability (or not)of specific encounters. Rather, we arguethat narrative stories provide an importantmethod to understand when and why con-tact makes a difference.

We have therefore adopted a biographicalapproach to explore the spatial and temporalcontexts in which individuals’ prejudices aredeveloped, challenged or interrupted. Indoing so, we have focused on particularexamples of meaningful contact that wereidentified by two interviewees as having anaffect on their understandings of, and atti-tudes towards, ‘difference’: exploring theirself-reflections about how they made choicesaround the control of their feelings, self-

identifications and approaches to futurerelationships; as well as our own readings oftheir accounts. These were neither managedcontact (for example, organised communityevents), nor examples of random contact inpublic spaces such as the marketplace or thebus, but rather were encounters within thecontext of semi-institutionalised spaces ofthe family home, the workplace and aschool.

Our account recognises that prejudice isnot a static property that an individualeither holds or does not possess; and thatindividuals cannot be simplistically cate-gorised as members of the ‘majority’ or‘minority’. Rather, it demonstrates the dyna-mism of self-identities and the complexways that individuals frame themselves asboth passing judgements on others andbehaving in prejudical ways, yet also as therecipients of others’ prejudices and as able tochange their attitudes to specific differences.

Influenced by Sayer’s (2005) argument1

that we develop internalised moral disposi-tions as a product of socialisation, we under-stand both of our interviewees’ accounts todemonstrate pre-reflexive, routine orienta-tions to the world produced through theirearly emplaced experiences. Yet, in acknowl-edging the significance of these early dispo-sitions towards ‘others’, we do not mean tosuggest that these have shaped their subse-quent actions in a deterministic way.

Rather, both Craig and Amirah’saccounts describe changes in their attitudestowards particular social categories—minority ethnic groups and disabledpeople—when mobility (socio-economicand geographical respectively) emplacedthem in new spatial contexts, populated bydifferent people and governed by newsocial normativities. In both cases, exposureto different ways of seeing the world facili-tated self-reflection about their own livesand encounters with specific ‘others’ suchthat they intentionally produced and


embodied new dispositions towards theseparticular social groups.

Yet Craig and Amirah’s accounts alsonarrate the persistence of negative attitudestowards other categories of difference:immigrants and lesbians and gay menrespectively. In both cases, they areemplaced in specific social communities—aWhite, working class neighbourhood and atransnational Pakistani Muslim network—that provide containing narratives whichforeshadow their everyday positioningtowards these particular ‘others’, not with-standing their wider progressive disposi-tions. In Craig’s case, a narrative ofeconomic insecurity and injustice framesthe negativity he feels towards immigrants.Although Amirah’s account of her supportfor her son’s lesbian teacher demonstratesthat it is possible to stretch containing nar-ratives (here, through her interpretation ofIslam) in an elastic way to accommodatean exceptional individual, for contact withindividuals to change attitudes towards thegroups they represent we must be receptive,able and want to rethink the dominant rou-tine orientations to the world in which weare emplaced and invested.

Through its attention to processes ofboth mobility and emplacement, this papercontributes to debates in urban studiesabout when contact with difference mattersby highlighting the importance of everydaysocial normativities in the production ofmoral dispositions. As Butler (1993) argues,it is through the repetition of norms thatworlds materialise.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the referees for theirinsightful comments.

Funding

The authors are grateful to the EuropeanResearch Council which funded this research

through an Advanced Investigator Award (grantagreement no. 249658): Living with Differencein Europe.

Note

1. Sayer in turn was influenced by Bourdieu’sconcept of habitus.

References

Allport, G. W. (1954) The Nature of Prejudice.Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Amin, A. (2002) Ethnicity and the multiculturalcity: living with diversity, Environment andPlanning A, 34, pp. 959–980.

Bergson, H. (1911) Matter and Memory. London:George Allen and Unwin.

Bingham, N., Valentine, G. and Holloway, S.(1999) Where do you want to go tomorrow?Connecting children and the internet, Envi-ronment and Planning D, 17, pp. 655–672.

Bourdieu, P. (1990) In Other Words: Towards aReflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity.

Bruner, J. (1990) Acts of Meaning. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

Butler, J. (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Dis-cursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge.

Dovidio, J. F., Glick, P. and Rudman, L. A.(2005) On the Nature of Prejudice Fifty Yearsafter Allport. Oxford: Blackwell.

Elias, N. (2000) The Civilising Process. Oxford:Blackwell.

Finney, N. and Peach, E. (2004) Attitudes towardsasylum seekers, refugees and other immigrants:a literature review for the Commission forRacial Equality. Commission for Racial Equal-ity, London.

Ford, R. and Goodwin, M. J. (2010) Angry whitemen: individual and contextual predictionsof support for the BNP, Political Studies, 58,pp.1–25.

Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self Identity.Cambridge: Polity Press.

Goffman, E. (1963) Notes on the Management ofSpoiled Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Goffman, E. (1967) Interaction Ritual. New York:Pantheon.

Hemming, P. J. (2011) Meaningful encounters?Religion and social cohesion in the Englishprimary school, Social & Cultural Geography,12(1), pp. 63–81.


Hewitt, R. (2005) White Backlash: And the Politicsof Multi-culturalism. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Laurier, E. and Philo, C. (2006) Possible geogra-phies: a passing encounter in a cafe, Area, 38,pp. 353–363.

Leitner, H. (2012) Spaces of encounters: immi-gration, race, class and the politics of belong-ing in small-town America, Annals of theAssociation of American Geographers, 102(6),pp. 1–19.

Maysaa, S., Bazna, E. D., Tarek, A. and Hatab, P.E. (2012) Disability in the Qur’an: the Islamicalternative to defining, viewing and relating todisability (http://www.scribd.com/doc/15623193/Disability-in-the-Quran; accessed 21December 2012).

Miles, M. (1983) Attitude towards persons withdisabilities. Mental Health Centre, MissionHospital, Peshawar.

Peacock, J. L. and Holland, D. C. (1993) The nar-rated self: life stories in process, Ethos, 21, pp.367–383.

Pettigrew, T. F. (1998) Intergroup contacttheory, Annual Review of Psychology, 49, pp.65–85.

Piekut, A., Valentine, G., Rees, P. andKupiszewski, M. (2012) Multi dimensionaldiversity in two European cities: thinkingbeyond ethnicity, Environment and PlanningA, 44(12), pp. 2988–3009.

Sandeloswki, M. (1991) Telling stories: narrativeapproaches in qualitative research, Journal ofNursing Scholarship, 23, pp. 161–166.

Sandercock, L. (1998) Towards Cosmopolis. NewYork: Wiley and Sons.

Sayer, A. (2005) The Moral Significance of Class.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sennett, R. (1974) The Fall of Public Man. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sennett, R. (2003) Respect in a World of Inequal-ity. London: Penguin.

Somers, M. R. (1994) The narrative constitutionof identity: a relational and network approach,Theory & Society, 23, pp. 605–649.

Swanton, D. (2010) Flesh, metal, road: tracingthe machinic geographies of race, Environ-ment & Planning D, 28, pp. 447–466.

Valentine, G. (2008) Living with difference:reflections on geographies of encounter,Progress in Human Geography, 32, pp.321–335.

Valentine, G. (2010) Prejudice: rethinking geo-graphies of oppression, Social & Cultural Geo-graphy, 11, pp. 521–537.

Valentine, G. and Harris, C. (under review) Stri-vers versus skivers: class prejudice and thedemonisation of dependency in everyday life.Paper available from the authors c/o Depart-ment of Geography, University of Sheffield,S10 2TN, UK.

Valentine, G. and Sadgrove, J. (2012) Lived dif-ference: the transmission of positive and neg-ative attitudes towards others, Environmentand Planning A, 44, pp. 2049–2067.

Valentine, G. and Waite, L. (2012) Negotiatingdifference through everyday encounters: thecase of sexual orientation and religion andbelief, Antipode, 44, pp. 474–492.

Watson, S. (2006) City Publics: The (Dis)en-chantments of Urban Encounters. London:Routledge.

Watson, S. (2009) The magic of the marketplace:sociality in a neglected public space, UrbanStudies, 46, pp. 1580–1591.

Weick, K. E. (1995) Sensemaking in Organiza-tions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labour: How Work-ing Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. Farn-borough: Saxton House.

Wilson, H. F. (2011) Passing propinquities in themulticultural city: the everyday encounters ofbus passengering, Environment & Planning A,43, pp. 634–649.

Wilson, H. F.(2013) Learning to think differ-ently: diversity training and the good encoun-ter, Geoforum, 45, pp. 77–82.

Yeoh, B. S. A. and Willis, K. (2005) Singaporeanand British transmigrants in China and the cul-tural politics of contact zones, Journal of Ethnicand Migration Studies, 31, pp. 269–285.

Yip, A. K. T. (2005) Queering religious texts: anexploration of British non-heterosexualChristians’ and Muslims’ strategy of con-structing sexuality-affirming hermeneutics,Sociology, 39(1), pp. 47–65.


valentine - biographical narratives of encounter

Documents