Social infrastructure and ‘left-behind places’

Abstract

We explore the making, unmaking and remaking of social infrastructure (SI) in ‘left-behind places’ (LBPs) through a case study a former mining village in northern England. We address the understudied affective dimensions of ‘left-behindness’. Seeking to move beyond a narrowly economistic of reading LBPs, our framework: strongly emphasises the importance of place attachments and the consequences of their disruption; considers LBPs as ‘moral communities’, seeing the making of SI as an expression of this; views the unmaking of SI through the lens of ‘root shock’; and explains efforts at remaking SI in terms of the articulation of ‘radical hope’.