Valuing the bowling alley: Contestations over the preservation of spaces of everyday urban multiculture in London

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Jackson, Emma. 2019. Valuing the bowling alley: Contestations over the preservation of spaces of everyday urban multiculture in London. The Sociological Review, 67(1), pp. 79-94. ISSN 0038-0261 [Article]

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026118772784

Abstract or Description

This paper builds on ‘the convivial, everyday turn’ (Neal et al, 2013) by approaching the workings of complex urban spaces of multiculture as entangled with processes of urban change that are infused with judgments and contestations about what is of value. This paper explores the competing value claims made for a leisure space, a London bowling alley, used by a diverse group of people (in terms of dis/ability, ethnicity, gender, class and age) that has been threatened with demolition. The paper examines how arguments about diversity and inclusivity are deployed in these debates and how official discourses are resisted through the mobilisation of other articulations of social value. The paper argues that the combination of the hollowing out of the concept of diversity and the political and economic context results in a paradox whereby multiculturalism is celebrated as an atmosphere and generator of capital while existing physical spaces of everyday urban multiculture are at best unprotected and at worst not recognised, devalued and demolished.

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Article

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https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026118772784