Too Many Voices, “Too Problematic to Be Plausible”: Representing Multiple Responses to Local Economic Development Strategies?

Abstract

Recent writing around urban political economy has highlighted the difficulty of representing multiple responses to local economic development strategies. It has been argued that it is conceptually important but nonetheless problematic to account for the multiplicity of individual, business, institutional, community, social and other groups' involvement in, interpretation of, or consumption of dominant city images and urban regeneration projects. This paper attempts such a project, presenting empirical case material from the UK city of Stoke-on-Trent, utilising the ethnographic grid–group theory conceived by Mary Douglas, and later developed with Aaron Wildavsky into a ‘cultural theory’ of political and economic change.