Professor Paul Cloke
Professor of Human Geography

Abstract:
Contested space: the contradictory political dynamics of food banking in the UK

© 2016, © the Author(s) 2016. This paper offers a critical reappraisal of the politics of food banking in the UK. Existing work has raised concerns about the institutionalisation of food banks, with charitable assistance apparently – even if inadvertently – undermining collectivist welfare and deflecting attention from fundamental injustices in the food system. This paper presents original ethnographic work that examines the neglected politics articulated within food banks themselves. Conceptualising food banks as potential spaces of encounter where predominantly middle-class volunteers come into contact with ‘poor others’ (Lawson and Elwood, 2013), we illustrate the ways food banks may both reinforce but also rework and generate new, ethical and political attitudes, beliefs and identities. We also draw attention to the limits of these progressive possibilities and examine the ways in which some food banks continue to operate within a set of highly restrictive, and stigmatising, welfare technologies. By highlighting the contradictory dynamics at work in food bank organisations, and among food bank volunteers and clients, we suggest the political role of food banks warrants neither uncritical celebration nor outright dismissal. Rather, food banks represent a highly ambiguous political space still in the making and open to contestation.

Abstract:
Postsecularity, Political Resistance, and Protest in the Occupy Movement

© Antipode Foundation. This paper examines and critically interprets the interrelations between religion and the Occupy movements of 2011. It presents three main arguments. First, through an examination of the Occupy Movement in the UK and USA-and in particular of the two most prominent Occupy camps (Wall Street and London Stock Exchange)-the paper traces the emergence of postsecularity evidenced in the rapprochement of religious and secular actors, discourses, and practices in the event-spaces of Occupy. Second, it examines the specific set of challenges that Occupy has posed to the Christian church in the UK and USA, arguing that religious participation in the camps served at least in part to identify wider areas of religious faith that are themselves in need of redemption. Third, the paper considers the challenges posed by religious groups to Occupy, not least in the emphasis on postmaterial values in pathways to resistance against contemporary capitalism.

Abstract:
Modes of Attentiveness: Reading for Difference in Geographies of Homelessness

Hegemonic accounts of urban homelessness, focusing on attempts to restrict homeless people's presence in public space, stress the punitive nature of current homelessness policy. In contrast, in this paper we explore the "messy middle ground" of the UK homeless services system. Examining Stacey Murphy's (2009) (Antipode 41(2):305-325) arguments regarding a shift to a "post-revanchist" era in San Francisco, we chart the apparent similarities between developments in San Francisco and changes to the management of street homelessness bought in to effect by the New Labour government in the UK, and assess the extent to which such developments might be read as holding in tension more obviously punitive and supportive trends usually viewed as necessarily oppositional. In the final part of the paper we present a re-reading of recent changes to the management of street homelessness in the UK through a postsecular lens. We suggest that this lens provides the possibility for a much more optimistic reading of homeless services and of the grammars of homelessness and urban (in)justice more broadly, and make the case for an alternative mode of academic attentiveness open to sometimes subtle and smaller-scale yet nonetheless important examples of different ways of understanding and doing. © 2013 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

Abstract:
Neoliberalism, Big Society and Progressive Localism

In the UK, the current Coalition government has introduced an unprecedented set of reforms to welfare, public services and local governance under the rubric of localism. Conventional analytics of neoliberalism have commonly portrayed the impacts of these changes in the architectures of governance in blanket terms: as an utterly regressive dilution of local democracy; as an extension of conservative political technology by which state welfare is denuded in favour of market-led individualism; and as a further politicised subjectification of the charitable self. Such seemingly hegemonic grammars of critique can ignore or underestimate the progressive possibilities for creating new ethical and political spaces in amongst the neoliberal canvas. In this paper we investigate the localism agenda using alternative interpretative grammars that are more open to the recognition of interstitial politics of resistance and experimentation that are springing up within, across and beyond formations of the neoliberal. We analyse the broad framework of intentional localisms laid down by the Coalition, and then point to four significant pathways by which more progressive articulations of localism have been emerging in amongst the neoliberal infrastructure. In so doing we seek to endorse and expand imaginations of political activism that accentuate an interstitial political sensibility that works strategically, and even subversively, with the tools at hand.

Abstract:
Annals: 40-40 vision

Four authors, including the current and founding editors, have collaborated to write this editorial that marks the 40th anniversary of Annals of Tourism Research. It has three objectives. The first is to look back and encourage reflection on the last 40. years of its development. This is done by recounting the twists and turns of the history and transformation of the journal as well as by analyzing the trends and patterns of knowledge formation. The second objective is to look sideways and examine developments in the broader social sciences of which Annals is part of. Finally the issues raised by the first two objectives provide the stimulus for a brief discussion about the future of the journal and the directions and challenges for tourism social science knowledge. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract:
Co-constituting neoliberalism: Faith-based organisations, co-option, and resistance in the UK

The increasing prominence of faith-based organisations (FBOs) in providing welfare in the UK has typically been regarded as a by-product of neoliberalism, as the gaps left by shrinking public service provision and the contracting out of service delivery have been filled by these and other Third Sector organisations. In this way, FBOs have been represented as merely being co-opted as inexpensive resource providers into the wider governmentalities of neoliberal politics. In this paper we critically question how the concept of neoliberalism has been put to work in accounts of voluntary sector cooption, and argue instead for a recognition of diff erent manifestations of secularism and religion, and their connections to changing political-economic and social contexts. Using the illustration of one particular FBO in the UK, we trace how neoliberalism can be co-constituted through the involvement of FBOs, which can off er various pathways of resistance in and through the pursuit of alternative philosophies of care and political activism. © 2012 Pion and its Licensors.

Abstract:
Emerging geographies of evil? Theo-ethics and postsecular possibilities

This paper suggests that the vocabulary and meaningfulness of 'evil' can be re-articulated, and to some extent redeemed from the extremes of fundamentalism and relativism. It uses intellectual resources from Nigel Wright, Walter Wink and Rene Girard to reconstruct some foundations for a reworking of evil in human geography. It then presents. an account of the reappearance of evil 'after postmodernism' in event, narrative and praxis, arguing that working through and acting against evil reveals its present nature in terms that defy the excesses of right-wing religious fundamentalism and the bland tolerance that can stem from an over-reliance on relativistic thinking. The paper considers how geographies of postsecular practice in areas such as homelessness emerge in response to discernment both of the spiritual interiorities and the exteriorities of landscapes of power, and of the ability of human action to influence these landscapes. © the Author(s) 2010.

Abstract:
Learning to be global citizens: the rationalities of fair-trade education

The ethics of everyday consumption has become a key concern for social and environmental justice campaigning by NGOs in the United Kingdom. Schools are a prominent site for such campaigns, where, alongside other 'controversial issues' and initiatives such as citizenship education, the problematisation of consumption practices has developed its own distinctive set of pedagogical devices. This paper questions the analytical framing of education as a space of neoliberal subjectifica- tion, in which 'critical pedagogy' is seen as the only legitimate form of resistance within theoretical mo dels of domination-subordination and governmentality. The institutionalisation of fair-trade educa- tion in schools in Bristol, a city in the southwest of England, is presented as an empirical case through which to consider how best to theorise the rationalities of consumption-oriented campaigning by NGOs. We discuss the consequences of problematising global responsibility where learning is seen as a performative encounter between reflexive actors situated in particular sociocultural environments. © 2010 Pion Ltd and its Licensors.

Abstract:
The periphery of care: Emergency services for homeless people in rural areas

Until recently, homelessness in rural areas has received little recognition because of overwhelming assumptions about the urban-centredness of homeless people and their needs. This paper seeks to build on recent research that has begun to uncover some of the problems and characteristics of rural homelessness, by suggesting two significant dynamics which together can shape the experience of different groups of homeless people in rural environments. First, rural places reflect particular local qualities which contextualise both the circumstances of homelessness and the provision of services in response to those circumstances. Secondly, the contemporary governance of homelessness unfolds rather unevenly in different rural areas, producing distinct local service environments with varying degrees of 'insider' and 'outsider' status in relation to joined-up responses to the needs of homeless people. These dynamics are articulated through three case studies: a remote friary in a deep rural area of southern England; a small hostel run by a vibrant non-statutory organisation in a small town in the west of England, and two advice centres in a coastal resort in the north-east of England. Through these case studies we highlight the importance of both local reactions to the homeless other, and local relations between central government funding, local authority initiatives and charitable organisations, in the production and consumption of spaces of care in settings set in, or serving, rural environments. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract:
Shelter at the margins: New Labour and the changing state of emergency accommodation for single homeless people in Britain

Responding to continuing concerns about unevenness in the supply and quality of emergency accommodation available to single homeless people, New Labour has increased the funding for such accommodation and imposed tighter regulations on the voluntary sector organisations providing it. Drawing on the first national survey of emergency accommodation projects operating in England, Wales and Scotland, the article shows that such initiatives have had far less impact than might be imagined. The supply of emergency accommodation in Britain remains markedly uneven, while the quality of accommodation and care provided by some voluntary sector organisations is a cause for serious concern. © the Policy Press, 2006.

Abstract:
'Unclaimed territory': Childhood and disordered space(s)

This paper explores adult discourses in literary references which revolve around the relationship between childhood and disordered space. This association is often constructed as a positive expression of the romantic innocence of childhood and nature, but it can also be construed as negative in cases where 'little devils' are let loose in hazardous urban settings. The complex dynamics of disorder relating to childhood are discussed in terms of the disorders both of nature and of injustice. The paper argues that childhood needs to be conceptualized less in terms of innocence and more in terms of otherness. Disordered spaces in these terms represent territories of becoming-other, where rhizomatic scrambling of adult-ordered striated space makes room for upwellings of the immanent othernesses of children. © 2005 Taylor. &. Francis Group Ltd.

Abstract:
Cetacean performance and tourism in Kaikoura, New Zealand

In this paper we use research into ecotouristic activities in Kaikoura, New Zealand, to discuss how the nonhuman agency of nature is implicated in the performance and meaning of place. Kaikoura has recently boomed as an ecotourist destination, and its changing nature has been coconstituted by the networked agency of whales and dolphins, whose charismatic animal appeal is a magnet for tourists. We discuss the power of representation to conjure up anticipatory ideas about place practices, the influence of mediating and staging tourist performances, and the importance of unconsidered habits and practices in prompting distinctive performances in particular places. Some tourists leave Kaikoura disappointed because the unpredictability of nature can disrupt anticipated experience. Others, however, in partaking in whale watching and swimming with dolphins, are presented with both educational experience and opportunities for relationally achieved connections with cetaceans which can result in intense experiences of immanence and unreflexive glee. This research poses significant questions about the ability of actor networks and relational assemblages to capture fully the power of the nonhuman to evoke sublime emotional and aesthetic relations with humans.

Abstract:
Consuming ethics: Articulating the subjects and spaces of ethical consumption

Geography's debates about how to maintain a sense of morally responsible action often emphasise the problematic nature of caring at a distance, and take for granted particular kinds of moral selfhood in which responsibility is bound into notions of human agency that emphasise knowledge and recognition. Taking commodity consumption as a field in which the ethics, morality, and politics of responsibility has been problematised, we argue that existing research on consumption fails to register the full complexity of the practices, motivations and mechanisms through which the working-up of moral selves is undertaken in relation to consumption practices. Rather than assuming that ethical decision-making works through the rational calculation of obligations, we conceptualise the emergence of ethical consumption as ways in which everyday practical moral dispositions are re-articulated by policies, campaigns and practices that enlist ordinary people into broader projects of social change. Ethical consumption, then, involves both a governing of consumption and a governing of the consuming self. Using the example of Traidcraft, we present a detailed examination of one particular context in which self-consciously ethical consumption is mediated, suggesting that ethical consumption can be understood as opening up ethical and political considerations in new combinations. We therefore argue for the importance of the growth of ethical consumption as a new terrain of political action, while also emphasising the grounds upon which ethical consumption can be opened up to normative critique. © 2005 Editorial Board of Antipode.

Abstract:
Day centres for homeless people: Spaces of care or fear?

It is now widely argued that the contemporary city is becoming an increasingly hostile environment for homeless people. As basic street survival strategies are criminalized and public space 'purified' of those whose 'spoiled' identities threaten to 'taint' fellow members of the public, city authorities seem to have turned from a position of 'malign neglect' to more obviously punitive measures designed to contain and control homeless people. Less widely acknowledged but equally prevalent, however, is a parallel rise in the 'urge to care'; evident in the growing number of night shelters, hostels and day centres emerging in recent years to provide shelter and sustenance to homeless people. This paper contributes to a small but growing body of work examining the development of the 'spaces of care' springing up in the interstices of a 'revanchist' city, by examining the development and internal dynamics of day centres for homeless people in the UK. Drawing upon a national survey of service providers, and a series of interviews and participant observations with day centre staff and users, the paper argues that day centres act as important sources of material resource and refuge for a highly stigmatized group. However, it warns against the romantic tendencies implicit in the notion of 'spaces of care', emphasizing that what for one person may operate as a 'space of care' might, for another, be experienced as a space of fear. The paper concludes by noting the ambiguity and fragility of such spaces within the wider 'revanchist' city. © 2005 Taylor. &. Francis.

Abstract:
Re-phasing neoliberalism: New labour and Britain's crisis of street homelessness

In this paper we continue the task of fleshing out understandings of "actually existing neoliberalism". More specifically, drawing on the work of Tom Ling, we suggest that Peck and Tickell's recent distinction between periods of roll-back/roll-out neoliberalisation can usefully be supple-mented by the identification of a second, more powerful moment of roll-out neoliberalism-described by Ling in terms of the shift from a system of governance to one of "governmentality". Illustrating our argument with an analysis of changing central government responses to a crisis of street homelessness in 1990s Britain, however, we draw attention to the uneven and often contrary effects of recent government policy in this field. The paper therefore concludes with a warning of the need to temper a reading of the juggernaut of roll-out neoliberalism with an awareness of the incomplete and plain "messy" character of actually existing neoliberalisation. © 2005 Editorial Board of Antipode.

Abstract:
Grounding ethical mindfulness for/in nature: Trees in their places

In this paper we examine attempts to reframe the ethics of nature-society relations. We trace a postmodern turn which reflects a distrust of overarching moral codes and narratives and points towards a more nuanced understanding of how personal moral impulses are embedded within, and inter-subjectively constituted by, contextual configurations of self and other. We also trace an ethical turn which reflects a critique of anthropocentrism and points towards moves to non-anthropocentric frames in which the othernesses and ethics of difference are shaped by an acknowledgement that human and non-human agency are relationally bound and assembled in networks and places. These turns suggest the need for a more sensitive 'ethical mindfulness' which is grounded in particular space-time contexts. Throughout the paper we draw on research we have conducted on the interconnections between trees and places, and in particular we describe three specific tree-places - an urban square, an urban cemetery and an orchard - which provide grounded contexts of encounter and potential for ethical mindedness. We conclude that notions of intrinsicality, otherness, enchantment and hybridity are helpful in configuring the search for grounded ethical mindfulness, both for and in nature. © 2003 Taylor. &. Francis Ltd.

Abstract:
The complex mobilities of homeless people in rural England

This paper explores the interconnected issues of mobility, power and meaning in the context of rural homelessness. It explores two common assumptions relating to these interconnections: that rural homeless people move to cities thereby transposing homelessness into an urban problem; and that mobility is deeply implicated in the mapping of moral codes in rural areas. Drawing on a range of interviews with homeless people, and workers with homelessness agencies in the rural areas of Gloucestershire and Somerset, the paper discusses four types of movement: 'local' homeless people moving out of rural areas; 'local' homeless people moving within rural areas; homeless 'incomers' moving to rural areas; and itinerant/transient homeless people moving through rural areas. The complex mobilities of rural homeless people in.uence common ideas about where homelessness occurs and how it is experienced. These mobilities also affect how homelessness is 'made known' in rural areas, as different elements of the mobility of homeless people are discursively scattered amongst identity labels and policy arenas other than homelessness. Finally, homeless mobilities problematise the adequacy and nature of policy responses to homelessness in rural areas. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract:
Commodification and adventure in New Zealand Tourism

This paper discusses the ways in which the commodification of adventure in tourism has increasingly become implicated in the production and consumption of tourist places. It examines the notion of adventure in tourism and the changing nature of commodification in postmodern and 'post-tourist' times. The rise of adventure tourism in New Zealand is used as an example of how adventure has been commodified. A survey of tourist brochures for adventure tourism attractions in New Zealand reveals some of the particular characteristics of adventure which are being incorporated into commodity form for tourists. These characteristics include place, spectacle, embodied experience and memory. Although aware of the limitations of using. textual evidence from brochures, the paper concludes that Best's (1989) society of the commodity and the society of the spectacle are clearly significant in New Zealand. Sign exchange is also important in the commodification of adventure although it is concluded that places and practices are as yet rarely eclipsed by adventure signification.

Abstract:
Dwelling, place, and landscape: an orchard in Somerset

In this paper we seek to develop the concept of dwelling as a means of theorising place and landscape. We do this for two interconnected reasons. First, dwelling has come to the fore recently as an approach to nature, place, and landscape, but we argue that further development of this idea is required in order to address issues relating to romantic views of places, authenticity, localness, and the way we 'see' landscapes. Second, we turn to the notion of dwelling to develop interconnected views of the world which can still retain a notion of place, a key but problematic concept within geography, landscape studies, and environmental thinking. In particular, we seek to develop ideas of place within the context of actor network theory. We explore the notion of dwelling in Heidegger and as adapted by Ingold, and we trace how dwelling has been deployed subsequently in studies of landscape and place. We then develop a more critical appreciation of dwelling in the context of an orchard in Somerset which we have researched as a place of hybrid constructions of culture and nature.

Abstract:
Homelessness and rurality: Exploring connections in local spaces of rural England

Homelessness and remains a neglected component of rural studies in Britain and Europe, research has tended to skirt around the subject, focusing either on groups in need located within rural housing markets or on those people experiencing rural poverty living within conventional properties. In this paper we want to connect homelessness with rurality by drawing on key findings from recently completed research on rural homelessness in England. We want to make connections between homelessness and rurality in two main ways. Firstly, given the limited knowledge base on rural homelessness, we set out the overall extent and profile of homelessness in rural England based on an analysis of unpublished official statistics. We also highlight how homelessness in rural England is bound up with a great deal of spatial unevenness and suggest that it is through localized investigation that important connections between homelessness and rurality can be best understood. In the second part of the paper, we draw on findings from local research conducted in two rural districts in Gloucestershire to provide a range of evidence that points to the significance of the local spaces of rural homelessness. In particular, this work demonstrates the ways in which local structures of housing provision and socio-cultural and political processes in these districts impact on the nature and experiences of rural homelessness.

Abstract:
Interconnecting housing, homelessness and rurality: Evidence from local authority homelessness officers in England and Wales

This paper investigates the discursive and practical policy issues relating to homelessness in rural areas of England and Wales. It begins with the argument that such homelessness does represent a significant but under-emphasised problem in rural areas. Official government counting of rural homelessness itself underestimates the scale of the problem, but provides a starting point for an understanding of more hidden forms of homelessness. We suggest a number of ways in which rural homelessness is less visible than its well-publicised urban counterpart, relating to the morphology of rural areas, social-cultural constructs of idyll-ic rural living, and conceptual assumptions which render homelessness as out-of-place in purified rural spaces. We then report on findings from a survey of local authority homelessness officers in England and Wales and in-depth interviews with officers in the counties of Somerset and Gloucestershire. Seeing the issues through the eyes of these practitioners clarifies a number of strands of the invisibility of rural homelessness, and points to very significant interconnections between 'housing' and 'homelessness' discourses in the local rural policy process. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract:
Making the homeless count? Enumerating rough sleepers and the distortion of homelessness

This article traces the power of numbers in discourses relating to homelessness in Britain. It argues that enumeration has played a formative role in the recording of homelessness as a 'problem', and in the public policy response to homelessness in specific locations. In particular, the use of rough sleeper counts as popular defining representations of the problem of, and response to, homelessness is analysed in terms of their wider pivotal significance in political and policy discourses relating to homeless people. The article concludes that how rough sleeper counts are undertaken has clear distorting consequences for the identification and understanding of to what extent, where, and among whom homelessness represents a pressing social issue. Discursive valorisation of enumeration needs to be interconnected critically with other more qualitative forms of knowledge drawing on the experience of housing officers, local agency workers and others dealing with localised homelessness on a day-to-day basis.

Abstract:
The geographies of homelessness in rural England

Relatively little attention has been given to the geographies of homelessness in England, still less to the nature and scale of homelessness in rural areas. In this paper we draw on analyses of unpublished official on local homelessness and a national survey of local authorities to investigate the geographies of homelessness in rural England. In particular, we present findings on three key components of rural homelessness: the changing scale and profile of this homelessness; local authority practices for dealing with homelessness; and the ways in which the scales of homelessness in rural areas may remain undercounted within official homelessness statistics.

Abstract:
The local spaces of welfare provision: Responding to homelessness in rural England

In this paper we contribute to recent discussions of the spatial restructuring of welfare provision in the UK. We focus on a particular sector of welfare - the provision of welfare support for homeless people - and consider the complex spatialities that are bound up with agency responses to homelessness. The paper is divided into two main parts. In the first, we position central homelessness policy within a broader context of welfare restructuring in the UK and consider important connections between central and local processes of welfare and homelessness provision. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the local spaces of welfare provision and explore sets of central-local policy entanglements bound up with the provision of homelessness support in two rural counties in England. In doing this, we highlight how the imposition of central homelessness policy is complicated by historical and contemporary local structures of welfare support, the nature of local homelessness, and the practices of individual local authorities. We also show how the provision of homelessness support is further complicated by the activities of new local networks of welfare provision. © 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.