Sarah Elwood and Victoria Lawson, Department of Geography, University of Washington
In the recent recession in the US (termed by some The Great Recession and arguably dated 2007-2010) media, political and civic discourse have sought to articulate where economic crisis and purported recovery are felt and by whom, and to explain why some people and places are the victims of crisis, or beneficiaries of recovery. These narratives are powerful sources of transformation because they produce and rework social and spatial categories (such as ‘middle class’, ‘poor’, or ‘suburb’) and invest them with meaning. They make some differences visible and others invisible, situate some people and places as sympathetic and deserving of help and others not, and render certain forms of assistance necessary and acceptable (or not). We will show these narratives of crisis are powerful mechanisms in re-negotiating dominant social and spatial imaginaries of class and poverty, normative understandings of what it means to be ‘poor’ or ‘middle class’, and as well as individuals’ own identities, subjectivities, and attitudes toward (different) others.
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