Thoughts 19/01/24
Met with supervisors earlier this week and in preparation for registration I need to revisit my research questions as my current questions presuppose my answer to them. The advice is to formulate straightforward research questions that allow me to discover something about the topic.
I also need to think about the scope and field of the research:
- Is this about the cultural history of this place/period, is it about its transformation of the area, or is it about what the area has become? Bearing in mind that if it is a historical research project, this is a disciplinary approach with its own set of questions/concerns and methodologies.
- There may be scope to have two questions: cultural history and the role of nostalgia in place-making, but I need to define what questions are helpful to the project and achievable, and what will be too much.
I think fundamentally I am interested in the cultural/creative history of this place and period. I don’t think it’s hugely interesting to me to consider the planning of the new urban redevelopment… in terms of the figures and practicalities of that process. I’m not entirely interested in the planning of housing or amenities, nor the political or economic forces at work. These matters seem contextual to me rather than being the deep dive area of the research.
But within the cultural/creative history I have questions about why any of this is important… did any of this matter both at the time and does it matter now? There is something of a question of legacy, of what has been lost from this time, of what is being repurposed to legitimise the redevelopment work and add to the area’s cultural caché. But also I think there’s something in here about erasure… queer and outsider stories. Contrasts of cultural production and consumption – abilities to physically hold the space but stories of being driven from it.
As well as being a hugely fertile creative scene, the area has a radical and political history with trade unions and Housmans established here – and according to Roger a Neo-nazi community… So do I plunge into this? I don’t think I’m entirely interested in the organisation and history of political groups and activities in the area. Except that I acknowledge that politics is a thread in art, communities and subcultures. And crucially that people – their bodies, identities, lifestyles – become politicised regardless of whether they are politically engaged themselves.
Case studies: the proposal cites Mutoid Waste Company, Cubitt, Bagleys/The Cross as areas for research. Do I want to limit myself to these or leave myself room for other discoveries? Be sure to justify what I focus on, ie I’m not just selecting groups that I like; I am choosing to focus on areas that serve the project.
Make my own working definitions for the registration form ie what is my definition of the King’s Cross area?
Questions to answer (from Churchill and Sanders Getting your PhD)
- What previous research has been conducted?
- Times Square Red Times Square Blue (TSRTSB)
- Ford, Laura Grace, 2021, Thesis, Threshold cartographies: The poetics of contested space PhD thesis, Royal College of Art.
- Remaking London Ben Campkin
- What have been the main research questions?
- TSRTSB: “This essay’s purpose is to present a vernacular periplum of what might be found in the Times Square gay cruising venues and the culture that grew up around them, as well as to suggest an overview of what went on in Manhattan straight pornographic theaters encouraging gay sex over those years.”
- TSRTSB: Taken as a whole, the book is an attempt to dismantle some of those discourses, to analyze their material underpinnings, and to suggest ways they have changed over time— and thus to suggest ways you and I might further want to change them, unto continuing them at new sites and in new forms. The polemical passion here is forward-looking, not nostalgic, however respectful it is of a past we may find useful for grounding future possibilities.
- Threshold cartographies: an investigation into the collective social formations that have become absent as a result of radical reordering of urban space in the post-industrial era.
- Threshold cartographies: By investigating the social and ideological formations that have not been fully erased I develop a better understanding of how the absent collective subject is exerting an influence on the present.
- Remaking London: In this book we shall examine different phases and examples of urban renewal in London by focusing, in particular, on the forms of decline and degradation they have purportedly set out to counter.
- Remaking London: The discussion will centre on two problems: first, how today’s ‘dysfunctional’ regeneration zones can be situated in relation to a longer-term history and through a better appreciation of changing approaches towards urban ‘improvement’; second, how to understand the ways in which in its various material and symbolic forms urban degradation drives, and is actively produced within, urban change, and how it appears in a range of cultural artefacts directly associated with different phases of urbanisation.
- Remaking London: Rather than attempt a comprehensive survey, our approach shall be to focus on the histories of clusters of present-day regeneration sites, providing a sense of the cultural and historical production of these places over time.
- What kinds of questions have been asked, i.e. descriptive, explanatory or exploratory?
- What has the previous research concluded?
- What have been the main approaches/perspectives within previous research?
- What are the key concepts and conceptual debates?
- What debates/writers/topics or approaches interest me most?
- Are there any empirical gaps in the area?
- Remaking London: If broader critical approaches to the understanding of regeneration as culturally produced across different media have been lacking in contemporary scholarship, so too have critical historical perspectives. Contested understandings of history are central to the conflicts that surround urban restructuring.
- Are there any underdeveloped or less utilised approaches?