Overview

Set in the Northern English City of Leeds, in the midst of Liz Truss’ 49 days in office, what we are now calling The Cost of Living Crisis emerges as the most recent incantation of economic decline. Challenging the ease with which this phrase has become commonplace, this monograph provokes questions of when and for whom it became normal to discuss the cost of being alive. The Cost of Living Crisis is both new and not new. With a focus on how economic decline is temporally experienced, Wood explores how consumption habits find solidarity with the past, claim membership in the present and grasp at uncertain futures. With a concern for where agency lies, Wood ultimately asks us: How is it that people deal, engage and reclaim precarious futures in the shop? Drawing from research conducted in a food pantry – a food bank that simulates a shop – Wood takes up a concept of provisioning as embodied knowledge and cultivated competence defined by the normalisation of economic recession. However, amidst hopelessness, the food pantry also materialises everyday acts of hope, care and play, which, in turn, perhaps provoke a reimagination not just of what a food bank is but of what shopping could be. This book is applicable to scholars of temporality, political and economic anthropology, the anthropology of Britain, economic crisis and consumption.

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9781032865447

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Reviews

""Presenting ethnographic research from the North of England, Natalie Wood provides a sophisticated perspective on everyday challenges of the cost of living crisis. Combining emerging concepts of Provisioning and Temporal Proximity with established theories on consumption and austerity politics, Wood delicately captures the intricacies of a crisis event as it unfolds. Cutting across generational concerns for the future of the UK, this highly readable book will be of interest to scholars of economic and political anthropology, time and temporality, the anthropology of Britain, and urban studies"". Daniel Knight, University of St. Andrews

Author Information

Natalie Wood is a postgraduate student in Social Anthropology. Her MA research, which she conducted at the University of Auckland, forms the basis of this monograph. She is currently an ESRC-funded PhD candidate at the University of Manchester, UK, where she is conducting research on hope, play and ‘forgottenness’ in Blackpool, UK.

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