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Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-soc-10.1177_0038038520975593 for Social Polarisation at the Local Level: A Four-Town Comparative Study on the Challenges of Politicising Inequality in Britain by Insa Koch, Mark Fransham, Sarah Cant, Jill Ebrey, Luna Glucksberg and Mike Savage in Sociology

Drawing on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2014–2016 for the Understanding Everyday Participation (UEP) project, this paper addresses the relationship between space, place and participation in a “suburban village” on the edge of the city of Aberdeen in North East Scotland. Recent critiques have pointed to the ways in which the rural and peri-urban domains have been neglected in cultural policy as the by-product of a preoccupation with urban regeneration and the “creative city”. Working with conceptual frameworks developed by Raymond Williams and Charles Taylor, our research reveals the rich fabric of participation in this community, reflecting an historically rooted “common culture”, through which social tensions are mediated by a “village social imaginary”. This “residual” formation, which emphasises the importance of everyday culture to the constitution of the civic realm, suggests a much broader understanding of cultural value than is currently recognised in policy, but is currently under threat from generational change and social flux.

The Understanding Everyday Participation (UEP) research project questions “official” versions of what constitutes cultural participation and “proposes a radical re-evaluation of the relationship between participation and cultural value” (www.everydayparticipation.org/about/test-showcase-page/). This article will map out a selective literature review of everyday life with a particular focus on sociological writing, and additional contributions from both scholars of history and philosophy. It will suggest how such work might illuminate both UEP research and cultural policy development. Furthermore, it makes the case for such literature usefully underpinning the project’s focus on developing the “research–policy–practice nexus”, arguing that a careful analysis of the complexities of everyday life can help to generate more democratic and participatory everyday cultural environments.

The central issue is an analysis of the social construction and significance of the weekend. This is examined in the contexts of both historical and contemporary Manchester and Salford. The analysis uses theories of spatiality and temporality within everyday life, examining the extent to which the weekend can be considered both different to, and part of, everyday life. It considers whether the weekend can still (or could ever) be considered a more autonomous `time space' or if `flexible' working patterns will undermine it. In that these micro processes of everyday life are where the macro economic policies are enacted, this study has wider political implications.Two main methods are employed. Primary and secondary historical source materials used to understand aspects of both the development of the weekend and the way in which it has been practised in Manchester and Salford. The contemporary weekend is addressed through two pieces of fieldwork; one with people holding allotments in south Manchester and the other with supermarket workers in Salford. These consist of interviews with individuals which were recorded, transcribed and manually coded to develop themes.The analysis indicates that the weekend remains an important and pervasive institution. However, for some social groups, notably those working in the retail sector, the weekend is being eroded. There is increasingly a divide between workers like these, who are expected to work at weekends, and those who have weekends `off as a matter of course. Key areas of the analysis include marking the boundary between the week and the weekend, what people do, who they see and where they go; in short, an assessment of how the everyday spatialities and temporalities of interviewees construct their weekends.As well as contributing to our understanding of the hitherto relatively unexplored institution of the weekend itself, this thesis adds to our understanding of the temporal and spatial construction of our social world and the constraints under which this process operates.

The central issue is an analysis of the social construction and significance of the weekend. This is examined in the contexts of both historical and contemporary Manchester and Salford. The analysis uses theories of spatiality and temporality within everyday life, examining the extent to which the weekend can be considered both different to, and part of, everyday life. It considers whether the weekend can still (or could ever) be considered a more autonomous `time space' or if `flexible' working patterns will undermine it. In that these micro processes of everyday life are where the macro economic policies are enacted, this study has wider political implications. \ud \ud Two main methods are employed. Primary and secondary historical source materials used to understand aspects of both the development of the weekend and the way in which it has been practised in Manchester and Salford. The contemporary weekend is addressed through two pieces of fieldwork; one with people holding allotments in south Manchester and the other with supermarket workers in Salford. These consist of interviews with individuals which were recorded, transcribed and manually coded to develop themes.\ud \ud The analysis indicates that the weekend remains an important and pervasive institution. However, for some social groups, notably those working in the retail sector, the weekend is being eroded. There is increasingly a divide between workers like these, who are expected to work at weekends, and those who have weekends `off as a matter of course. Key areas of the analysis include marking the boundary between the week and the weekend, what people do, who they see and where they go; in short, an assessment of how the everyday spatialities and temporalities of interviewees construct their weekends. \ud \ud As well as contributing to our understanding of the hitherto relatively unexplored institution of the weekend itself, this thesis adds to our understanding of the temporal and spatial construction of our social world and the constraints under which this process operates.

If not in reality, then in the cultural imaginary of Western society, the weekend is often pictured as a pilgrimage site for families. By particularly focusing on the experience of the weekend amongst non-resident parents and their child(ren), this article offers a simultaneously new and innovative gaze on the issue. Drawing on middle-class non-resident parents’ accounts collected through episodic interviews, it explores the beginning, the middle and the ending of those fortnightly weekends. Making use of a qualitative approach, key moments of anticipation, experience and farewell are examined, and the main features highlighted. Using a sociological perspective, the findings suggest that whilst outside the week, its promise is to synchronise everyone under a same family clock in the view of a ‘quality’ and ‘special’ time; inside the weekend, non-resident parents and their children experience a family ritual. In between the expectation and joy in the anticipation and the sadness and the sorrow of farewell,...