Abstract
ABSTRACTDrawing on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2014–2016 for the Understanding Everyday Participation (UEP) project, this paper addresses the relationship between space, place and participation in a “suburban village” on the edge of the city of Aberdeen in North East Scotland. Recent critiques have pointed to the ways in which the rural and peri-urban domains have been neglected in cultural policy as the by-product of a preoccupation with urban regeneration and the “creative city”. Working with conceptual frameworks developed by Raymond Williams and Charles Taylor, our research reveals the rich fabric of participation in this community, reflecting an historically rooted “common culture”, through which social tensions are mediated by a “village social imaginary”. This “residual” formation, which emphasises the importance of everyday culture to the constitution of the civic realm, suggests a much broader understanding of cultural value than is currently recognised in policy, but is currently under threat from generational change and social flux.
Highlights
KEYWORDS Participation; place; urban– rural; clubs and institutions; community; cultural value
In this paper, we address the Understanding Everyday Participation (UEP) project’s concern with the relationship between space, place and participation (Miles & Gibson, 2016) in an account of our research on the nature and significance of everyday forms of participation in a “suburban village” on the edge of the city of Aberdeen in North East Scotland
Drawing on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2014–2016 for the Understanding Everyday Participation (UEP) project, this paper addresses the relationship between space, place and participation in a “suburban village” on the edge of the city of Aberdeen in North East Scotland
Summary
KEYWORDS Participation; place; urban– rural; clubs and institutions; community; cultural value In setting out and discussing some key findings of our research on the case study of Peterculter in this paper, we show how these interactions must be understood against an historical background of complex interdependencies between town and country; the impact of a changing economy and shifting patterns of work on the dynamics of cultural spaces and institutions; and the central role of a “village imaginary” in negotiating community identity and the tensions of local social relations.
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