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SUMMARY:The spatial politics of aspiration - Sam Strong\, University of Ca
 mbridge
DTSTART:20151105T130000Z
DTEND:20151105T140000Z
UID:TALK61332@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr. P MR Howell
DESCRIPTION:The notion of aspiration achieves vast political work in conte
 mporary society. It functions as a means of reducing issues of poverty\, w
 orklessness and social abandonment to the scale of the failed\, abject sub
 ject. In so doing\, aspiration is a concept which draws attention away fro
 m the systemic processes of power driving these issues. It thoroughly depo
 liticises those benefitting from such processes of power\, portraying pove
 rty as a natural outcome rather than a complex\, often violent and interse
 ctional act of abandon/ment. Furthermore\, aspiration holds an ongoing rol
 e as an emergent governmentality\, not only used to criticise the margins 
 of society\, but to discipline those at the centre. This paper takes issue
  with the frequent diagnosis of a 'lack of aspiration' recorded at ground-
 level during ethnographic fieldwork by local and national decision-makers.
  Instead\, it draws upon testimonies of job-seekers and secondary school c
 hildren living in Britain's most deprived borough to interrogate the compl
 ex geographical formations of aspiration. It exposes the intimate linkages
  between the geographies of people's everyday lives and encounters\, and t
 heir hopes\, desires and objectives for the future. It will conclude by co
 nsidering the ways in which aspiration can be reclaimed as a concept upon 
 which a more radical\, socially just politics can be constructed.
LOCATION:Room 101\, Hardy Building\, Department of Geography
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