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Bread‐and‐butter politics: Democratic disenchantment and everyday politics on an English council estate
Author(s) -
KOCH INSA
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/amet.12305
Subject(s) - disenchantment , politics , democracy , neoliberalism (international relations) , sociology , political economy , collective action , working class , narrative , political science , public administration , law , linguistics , philosophy
ABSTRACT Despite evidence of widespread disenchantment with formal politics among England's impoverished sectors, people on the margins continue to engage with elected representatives on their own terms. On English council estates (housing projects), residents mediate their experiences of an alien and distant political system by drawing local politicians into localized networks of support and care. While this allows residents to voice demands for “bread and butter,” personalized alliances with politicians rarely translate into collective action. The limits of one political party's bread‐and‐butter strategy highlight the precariousness of working‐class movements at a time when the political Left has largely been dismantled. They also demonstrate the need to account for the lived realities of social class in aspirational narratives for “alternative” democratic futures. [ democratic crisis , neoliberalism , voting , working‐class movements , council estates , alternative democracies , United Kingdom ]