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Re-imagining Home: Visualising the Multiple Meanings of Place

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Space, Place and Environment

Part of the book series: Geographies of Children and Young People ((GCYP,volume 3))

Abstract

Discourses of place are implicated in the urban regeneration strategies of government authorities that attempt to shift representations from those of poverty and disorder to creative, “cosmopolitan” living. Young people have had a particular role to play in this process, at times becoming part of the discourse of dysfunction in a portrayal of both disorder and risk, their presence on the street needing to be managed by particular forms of urban planning. This chapter argues that a more polysemous account of urban transformation is needed to understand young people’s diverse attachments to place and the politics of representation that they engage in to manage positions of inequality. Using participatory filmmaking, five young people from the east London Borough of Hackney reimagined their place in their neighborhood, challenging discourses of both degeneration and gentrification. While separately the films provide subjective imaginations of Hackney, entangled they generate narratives of contradiction, loss, synchronicity, and mobility that present a more complex picture of Hackney as home.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Environment & Development, Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet Street, WC1E 7HX, London, UK

    Melissa Butcher

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  1. Melissa Butcher
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Correspondence to Melissa Butcher .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Education, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Karen Nairn

  2. Department of Geography, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

    Peter Kraftl

  3. Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Tracey Skelton

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Butcher, M. (2016). Re-imagining Home: Visualising the Multiple Meanings of Place. In: Nairn, K., Kraftl, P., Skelton, T. (eds) Space, Place and Environment. Geographies of Children and Young People, vol 3. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-90-3_12-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-90-3_12-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-4585-90-3

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Re-imagining Home: Visualising the Multiple Meanings of Place
    Published:
    15 March 2016

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-90-3_12-2

  2. Original

    Re-imagining Home: Visualising the Multiple Meanings of Place
    Published:
    02 January 2016

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-90-3_12-1

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