Picturing difference: juxtaposition, collage and layering of a multiethnic street

My research is an ethnographic exploration of how cultural and ethnic diversity manifests through regular, face-to-face social contact on the Walworth Road in South London. My focus is the small independent shops along the mile length of this multi-ethnic street and the social and spatial interactions between proprietors and customers within them. While absorbed in an ethnography of everyday life, I searched for ways of understanding the layers of place, time and experience that make this street. As an architect, I had a fascination for how urban space is designed and appropriated, and a predilection for a visual reading of the city. As an inexperienced ethnographer, I had to learn about a much slower process of looking; making time to sit, listen and talk. My research methodology has been influenced by a combination of architectural and ethnographic approaches to how individuals appropriate and re-constitute urban space in the habitual rhythm of their day-to-day lives. In this paper I expand on my ethnographic process of exploring difference through pictures made during fieldwork. I use juxtaposition, collage and layering as both illustrative forms and analytic methods for observing and representing difference

Being at home: space for belonging in a London caff

This paper relates migration and home through the experiences of belonging negotiated by both newcomers and established residents in a South London caff. My account emerges out of an ethnographic exploration of Nick's Caff, a small meeting place off a multi-ethnic, inner city Street. Urban change and social diversity are exemplified in the Walworth Road: a place from which one can hear the chimes of Big Ben and catch glimpses of the London Eye, but which remains curiously detached from the image of a prestigious city; where remnants of white working-class culture juxtapose with a variety of cultures brought from across the globalising world; and where emergent cultures are forged across the difficulties and possibilities of cultural difference. Nick's Caff situates the day-to-day and face-to-face experiences of belonging within a shared space in the contemporary city. This paper explores how different individuals reconstitute conventional understandings of 'home' and 'family' through inhabiting their regular tables in the Caff. I expand on 'belonging' as a mode of social interaction through three key ideas: social space, practice and sociability. I analyse the social and spatial dimensions of everyday interactions in the Caff, and examine whether intermingling within the Caff produces alternative understandings of belonging, beyond the binaries of insider/outsider or local/foreigner

A mile of mixed blessings: an ethnography of boundaries and belonging on a South London street

This thesis is an ethnography of how individuals experience urban change and difference on a south London street. My research focuses on the contemporary increase in cultural and ethnic diversity in London, and I explore what this means for social life and shared space on the Walworth Road. The purpose is to observe and interpret the forms of contact and distance people develop in living with difference in their everyday lives. I use a mixture of official, archival and ethnographic data to contrast how individuals transgress or re-inscribe social and spatial boundaries, and how systems of power authorise boundaries between people and places. I also combine ethnographic and visual methods to analyse and illustrate the layers of place, time and experience that are invoked by narratives of change on the Walworth Road. Although my thesis connects the global and local impacts of change, I select the small independent shops along the Walworth Road as the base of my exploration. Within a selection of shop interiors, I explore forms of social contact that are locally constituted through regular, face-to-face interaction, and through shared spaces and practices that engage people across diverse spectrums. I analyse the relationships between proprietors and customers: between workspaces and work skills and social spaces and social skills. Through this empirical process, I emphasise the social and political significance of ordinary spaces and informal memberships that emerge out of everyday contact in neither overtly public, nor overtly private space. This thesis has been edited into a book form to be released by Routledge in May 2012, the title of which is ‘City, Street and Citizen: The measure of the ordinary’