Re-imagining Contested Communities: Connecting Rotherham through Research

Description

This is a book that challenges contemporary images of `place'. Too often we are told about `deprived neighbourhoods' but rarely do the people who live in those communities get to shape the agenda and describe, from their perspective, what is important to them. In this unique book the process of re-imagining comes to the fore in a fresh and contemporary look at one UK town, Rotherham. Using history, artistic practice, writing, poetry, autobiography and collaborative ethnography, this book literally and figuratively re-imagines a place. It is a manifesto for alternative visions of community, located in histories and cultural reference points that often remain unheard within the mainstream media. As such, the book presents a `how to' for researchers interested in community collaborative research and accessing alternative ways of knowing and voices in marginalised communities.

Kate Pahl is Professor of Literacies in Education at the University of Sheffield, with an interest in artistic methodologies and co-produced literacy research with communities. Elizabeth Pente is a doctoral student at the University of Huddersfield whose research is concerned with public history and post-Second World War urban decline and regeneration in the UK. Zanib Rasool, MBE has worked 30 years in the community and is currently employed as Partnership and Development Manager for the charity Rotherham United Community Sports Trust. Elizabeth Campbell, co-author of Doing Ethnography Today and The Other Side of Middletown, is Associate Professor of Education at Marshall University, US

"These community stories and voices highlight the power of storytelling and narrative as a research methodology and method. This book will be of great interest, I believe, to academics, community practitioners and organizers, social justice advocates, policy makers, students at all levels, artists, humanists, and others." Theodore Alter, Co-Director of the Centre for Economic and Community Development, The Pennsylvania State University