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Paper short abstract:

Drawing on Sarah Ahmed's (2003) concept of "affective economies", this paper examines the material and affective processes through which a broad white political constituency was formed in support of the redevelopment of a traditional retail market in east London.

Paper long abstract:

Britain’s vast array of post-war social housing estates are currently being redeveloped in a process known as ‘estate regeneration’. But while there has been much written about the class dynamics of regeneration, in terms of ‘gentrification’ (Gonzalez and Waley 2012; Watt 2021), there has been much less consideration of the ways in which class inequalities and solidarities intersect with those of race, and particularly whiteness. Through a focus on the redevelopment of a traditional retail market and social housing estate in Poplar, east London, this paper shows how whiteness is fundamental to the forms of solidarity that arose in contestation around the redevelopment. I examine how a white political constituency was mobilised in support of the regeneration proposals - and against an opposing campaign led by predominantly Bangladeshi traders. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s (2003) concept of affective economies, I analyse the material and affective processes through which this white constituency was formed. I show how racism and a negative desire to exclude was an important element of this. But I also show how, through the ways in which discourses and practices of heritage constructed the problem of the market’s material and decline, a broader white constituency (beyond those who articulated explicitly racist sentiments) was mobilised in support. The campaign in support of the regeneration proposals was therefore the product of “multiple nostalgias” (Berliner 2012; Balthazar 2017) but these must not be seen as entirely discreet but rather as connected by a racial logic.