Re-imagining Crisis: Pop-up Cultures and Precarious Lives in Austerity London

今天的伦敦人生活在一个“危机--普通”的时期(Berlant，2011)。在正在实施的紧缩措施下，贫困和不平等正在加剧。住房危机正在恶化，越来越多的人处于不稳定的就业状态。有人认为，这种危机状态之所以会持续下去，是因为利益相关者不会考虑挑战新自由主义模式的解决方案(Elledge，2017)。考虑到这一点，这个项目考察了重新想象不稳定的条件以积极呈现它们的努力。在我现有研究的基础上，并通过开发两个新的案例研究，我将撰写一本专著，研究伦敦不稳定的工作和生活方式是如何被正面标记的。具体地说，我研究了“弹出式”文化在正常化和美化先发制人方面的作用。弹出式文化最初是一种临时的和流动的消费和文化场所的趋势。然而，它已经扩大到包括弹出式社会住房、弹出式法律援助中心、弹出式大学和弹出式医疗服务等现象。在我的博士学位中，我认为弹出式窗口的重要之处在于它对城市空间和时间的独特想象力。Popup接受了这样一个概念：一个灵活而令人惊讶的城市，一个包含秘密和“间隙”(中间)站点的城市，一个由微型和移动场所组成的城市。这些想象城市的方式显然引起了广泛的利益相关者的共鸣和吸引力，因为它们越来越多地被用来推广不同的场所、活动和服务。这个项目将询问跨行业对与不可预测性、短暂、小型化和介于两者之间的话语的庆祝，在这个普遍存在的轻率的时代，辩称它们已经出现，在一定程度上是为了使城市的不稳定和不安全得到合理化和补偿。这本专著将探讨弹出窗口的话语如何在四个关键领域积极地重新想象当代伦敦的早熟状况，该专著的四个经验性章节对此进行了研究：不稳定的劳动力、士绅化、社会住房部门的临时住所，以及私营部门住房危机的解决方案。这本专著将面向广大读者，并针对Verso、Penguin或Bloomsbury等能够在学术界内外传播这本书的出版商。除了这本专著的高影响价值之外，该联谊会还有另外两个以影响为导向的目标。首先，该项目将包括与营销战略公司‘Truth’合作组织一个利益相关者研讨会，该研讨会将探讨弹出窗口的话语如何部署在不同的部门(住房、劳工、场所品牌重塑)。受邀的利益相关者将包括开发商、建筑师、大伦敦议会成员、地方议会和弹出式空间管理公司。研讨会将围绕弹出窗口话语的影响展开辩论，并使我的工作能够影响利益相关者。第二，我会建立一个多媒体项目网站，在整个项目中传播我的发现和想法，并存放相关工作和其他学者和感兴趣团体的回应。该网站将成为持份者和公众参与项目的一个可访问的途径，以及一个发展学术和非学术网络的途径。除了创建项目社交媒体账户来推广网站外，我还将动员我现有的文化和城市地理学者网络、地方议会、大学和社会研究小组、i-Docs学者和卫报城市的联系人通过他们的媒体账户分享该网站。Goldsmiths的方法实验室和SLOM：Lab(丽贝卡·科尔曼都在其中担任领导角色)将协助宣传和推广网站，将其作为一种创新的方法和影响工具。作为实物支持，Truth将推广该网站，并在他们自己的网站上提供关于我的项目的信息。

Londoners today inhabit a period of 'crisis-ordinary' (Berlant, 2011). Under on-going austerity measures, poverty and inequality are rising. The housing crisis is worsening and more people are in precarious employment. It has been argued that this state of crisis is being perpetuated because stakeholders won't entertain solutions that contest the neoliberal model (Elledge, 2017). With this in mind, this project examines efforts at re-imagining precarious conditions to present them positively. Drawing on my existing research, as well as through the development of two new case studies, I will produce a monograph that examines how precarious ways of working and living in London are being branded positively. Specifically, I examine the role of "pop-up" culture in normalising and glamorising precarity.Pop-up started as a trend for temporary and mobile places of consumption and culture. However, it has expanded to include phenomenon such as pop-up social housing, pop-up legal aid centres, pop-up universities and pop-up health care services. In my PhD I argued that what is important about pop-up is its particular imaginations of urban space and time. Pop-up embraces the idea of a city that is flexible and surprising, that contains secret and "interstitial" (in-between) sites, and that is populated by micro and mobile places. These ways of imagining the city clearly resonate with and appeal to a wide variety of stakeholders, as they are increasingly adopted to promote diverse places, events and services. This project will interrogate the cross-sector celebration of discourses associated with unpredictability, ephemerality, miniaturisation and in-between-ness at a time of widespread precarity, arguing that they have emerged, in part, to rationalize and compensate for instability and insecurity in the city. The monograph will explore how pop-up's discourses positively re-imagine conditions of precarity in contemporary London across four key areas, examined in the monograph's four empirical chapters: precarious labour, gentrification, temporary accommodation in the social housing sector, and 'solutions' to the housing crisis in the private sector. The monograph will be written for a broad audience and targeted at publishers such as Verso, Penguin or Bloomsbury who can disseminate the book within and beyond academia. As well as the high impact value of the monograph, the Fellowship has two other impact orientated objectives. Firstly, the project will include the organization of a stakeholder workshop, in collaboration with the marketing strategy company 'Truth', which will explore how pop-up's discourses are deployed in different sectors (housing, labour, place rebranding). Invited stakeholder will include developers, architects, members of the Greater London Assembly, local councils and pop-up space management companies. The workshop will generate debate around the impacts of pop-up's discourses and enable my work to influence stakeholders. Secondly, I will develop a multimedia project website to disseminate my findings and ideas throughout the project, as well as to host relevant work and responses from other scholars and interested parties.The website will be an accessible way for stakeholders and members of the public to engage with the project, as well as a means by which to develop academic and non-academic networks. As well as creating project social media accounts to promote the website I will mobilise my existing networks of scholars within Cultural and Urban Geography, local councils, university and society research groups, scholars of i-Docs and contacts at Guardian Cities to share it via their media accounts. The Methods Lab at Goldsmiths and the SLOM:LAB (both of which Rebecca Coleman has leading roles in) will assist with publicizing and promoting the website as an innovative methodology and impact tool. As in kind support, Truth will promote the website and feature information about my project on their own website.