Paper short abstract:

This paper uses Liverpool's ECoC status 2008 as a lens to explore negotiations of Liverpudlian identities, in particular being ‘scouse.’ Through participant observation in a social housing complex the importance of neighbourhood and community to the authentic performance of identity become apparent.

Paper long abstract:

The city of Liverpool in North West England was European Capital of Culture (ECoC) in 2008. The ECoC year placed the spotlight on the much-beleaguered city and provided an opportunity to ask questions about understandings of identity with particular reference to ideas of what it means to be 'a proper scouser'('scouser' being a colloquial term for a person from Liverpool). Following a period of participant observation in a reading group in a North Liverpool over 55s housing complex the study reveals interesting notions about constructions of self and group identity.

Locality, neighbourhood and community, whilst interrelated notions, are revealed to be salient, distinct and subjective in the ways in which members of the reading group think about their individual identities. Utilising the work of Myerhoff (1986) about 'definitional ceremonies' this paper explores how the reading group, despite their advancing years, still negotiate and problematise what it means to be part of the Liverpudlian community. This snapshot forms part of an ethnographic study into performances of Liverpudlian identities during 2008 and the following year.

The paper will note the rivalry that exists between the cities of Manchester and Liverpool based on myth, legend, football, and trade. Taking a reflexive stance by identifying herself as Mancunian the researcher acknowledges the potential barriers that might have arisen in the anthropological encounters with the group but which in fact added to the richness of the data. More generally, the insider/outsider continuum is seen as part of the authenticating processes when discussing and performing identities.