Kevin Harris on neighbourhoods and neighbourliness, social inclusion, social capital, community engagement, citizenship, space and place...
Liverpool is a remarkable city which I regret never having had the chance to get to know. I was there today and for once had time for a little wander, taking in this delight on the eye-feast that is Duke Street.
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‘This is a private conversation!’ When we need an official to intervene I'm enchanted to discover that there is such a thing as the National Campaign for Courtesy. I bet they get some spam. Their chair has been praising the actions of a train driver who made an announcement rebuking a noisy mobile phone user. The assumption is that ‘the announcement was made because another passenger complained to a guard’. This was a commuter train, and the first class carriage, so perhaps it was neither the first nor predictably the last occasion when the complainant encountered this individual behaving in this way. Let's pass over the widely-held expectations that people who travel first class either (a) tend to be more civil towards one another than mere plebs, and/or (b) tend to be more assertive about their own importance and rights… It’s more instructive to think about how the story raises a central question in social relations: what is the point at which behaviour perceived as anti-social or uncivil, requires an intermediary? Should the complainant have spoken first to the phone user? (And in the circumstances, would non-verbal communication, ironically, have done the job?) Some people would say they should have done so. I might have tried that myself, with a smile and gestures towards the ears or a finger to pursed lips. In the neighbourhood context, where a comparable disagreement arises over noise, the advice is generally to try to speak to and reason with the offender first. Central and local authority websites, housing association guidance, consumer advice materials (e.g.), they all usually recommend that initially a personal, conciliatory approach should be tried. The story raises a few issues about appropriate behaviour in the public realm and between neighbours. For a start, one-off instances of discourteous behaviour in the public realm are not the same as repeated cases. If you know your journey will soon be over and you are not likely to see the individual again, you may just choose to sit it out. And community space is not the same as public space. If you live next door to someone whose behaviour you find uncivil or antisocial, your response might not be the same as it would be in a public venue, a park or square, or on public transport, or a non-local online forum, from which you can usually escape - whether or not you feel you have a strong sense of co-ownership of that space. What’s more, you can’t always count on your fellow citizens to back you up if you do complain. People may not sympathise with your sense of injustice; or if they do, there may be other reasons why they feel unwilling to express any kind of support, which might leave you, finally, heavily dependent on whatever official intervention society has on offer. At its worst, this diminution of social capital can be exaggerated to the point that it puts enormous pressure on those official roles, until they in turn become defensive and cannot cope: think Northern Ireland, for instance, or even the Amsterdam of...PREVIOUS POST
More on behaviour in the public realm I’ve been travelling more than usual recently, and I want to follow up on my recent post about behaviour on trains, referring also to an observation I made four years ago, when I had '...half-watched a young woman perform a 20 minute phase of what may have been a marathon meticulous make-up, including fastidious uprooting of eyebrows, the full MOT…' That was nothing. The other day a young woman sat down diagonally opposite me at the table, distributing luggage and clutter where she could, and within about ten minutes, after a trip to the toilet, she was surprisingly deshabillee and well into an intensive make-up routine. We shared this space for more than two hours, and she was still preening and powdering her image in her tiny mirror when I left the train before its journey was complete. The routine included two bouts (at least two, I did not pay attention the whole time) of squeezing spots at close range with her head down studiously. There was one lengthy spell of creaming the face and neck, and several bouts of face-brushing with all the head-bobbing that goes with it. After about an hour we had eyelash fixing – tricky on a fast-moving train, I would have thought. Do they have left-eye ones and right-eye ones? If so there’s a chance she might have put left on right unnoticed, and/or vice-versa, which might leave anyone looking a little inebriated. I did not inspect, although I suppose I might have done if invited to the cause. And then we had fingernails selected from a large box, apparently stuck on, then used to collect up all the scattered unused ones. I think that for some people, some of this might just be too intimate for the public realm. I was hugely impressed with the contrast between her personal concern and public disconcern. There was a sense of urgency, almost aggression, in her actions, in spite of the time it all took. Perhaps experience had taught her with this particular journey that there was no slack for the job in hand: two and a half hours to London and the task must be completed… You wouldn’t want to be pulling in to the terminus with more to do and not feeling able to leave the train perhaps, then being whisked back up the line as the return journey started, still touching up round the temples... At one point I wondered if this was an unavoidable occupational necessity – was she going to get off the train in London and get tipped out of a taxi straight onto the stage in the west end? Had I unknowingly been privileged to witness the meticulous preparation of a new operatic star? OK, perhaps serving in a night club bar or similar? My conclusion was not, because she kept pouring herself slugs of vodka and sticky-sweet. I could be wrong. As it happened, someone was taken seriously ill on the train during the journey. Medical expertise from among...
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