Ebook: Getting By: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain

While the 1% rule, poor neighbourhoods have become the subject of public concern and media scorn, blamed for society's ills. This unique book redresses the balance. Lisa Mckenzie lived on the St Ann’s estate in Nottingham for more than 20 years. Her ‘insider’ status enables us to hear the stories of its residents, often wary of outsiders. St Ann's has been stigmatised as a place where gangs, guns, drugs, single mothers and those unwilling or unable to make something of their lives reside. Yet in this same community we find strong, resourceful, ambitious people who are 'getting by', often with humour and despite facing brutal austerity.
“Enticing and inspiring in its authentic, emotionally charged honesty. . . . Getting By aims to challenge the stereotypes and ‘happy with their lot’ myths that patronize the complexity of human experience and emotion. An insider as well as a scholar, Mckenzie confronts the simplistic, judgmental ways that council estates and those in them are so often presented, via the stories of people who don’t merely survive, but who are resourceful, resilient, and brave. . . . Mckenzie writes without a shred of sentimentality, but with a conviction and passion that never allow us to be emotionless spectators. She hits out at the stigmas—gangs, drugs, guns, single mothers—applied by those on the ‘outside’ to communities such as this. The narratives are not only recounted with humor, love, and care but are also grounded in social and cultural context. She exposes the contradictions and complexities lived by the people of St Ann’s, and shows them trying to make sense of them from their place in a society built on inequality of opportunity and choice. . . . Her voice and those she presents here need to be brought to other silenced communities, to inspire their inhabitants to tell their own stories and put voices of resistance into the public domain.” —Vicky Duckworth, Edge Hill University ― Times Higher Education
“Mckenzie has managed to transform several academic pieces of work into an accessible book full of humanity and honesty about St Ann’s and some of the people who live there.” ― Spokesman (UK)
“The book excels in bringing to life the realities of life lived in hard circumstances and the ways in which people respond to troubling experiences and harsh life conditions.” ― Journal of Social Policy
“A book that pulls no punches about its politics and commitment to challenging the anti-working class hatreds that are so prevalent in the United Kingdom today.” ― Journal of Poverty and Social Justice
"I recommend Getting By to anyone searching for a more complex and authentic picture of life in poor neighbourhoods than that depicted in the barrage of increasingly banal selection of TV programmes which dominate our screens." ― Probation Journal
“McKenzie did not try to paint an idyllic view of the council estate with its ethnic tensions across families that settled many generations ago. However, her ethnography, which describes a mixed race community facing racism and endogamy from the middle classes, balances the narrow-minded view that often associates lower classes with racism.” ― lectures.revues.org
“A very personal approach to the topic of low-income working-class families in poorer communities in the context of the gradual implementation of austerity measures in Britain. . . . [McKenzie] leads the reader to examine their own understanding of the working class by challenging the stigma attached to this identity and by representing this silenced community in modern Britain.” -- Frederike Scholz ― Network, Magazine of the British Sociological Association
“This book challenges social scientists to think again about how working-class life on urban estates is portrayed, both academically and in the mainstream media.” ― Social Policy & Administration
“The stories within this book lay bare what it means to be regarded as inferior and an outcast in your own society. This is a resolutely impressive book written with authenticity and passion.” -- Mary O’Hara, journalist and author of “Austerity Bites”
“Essential reading for twenty-first-century Britain.” -- Andrew Sayer, Lancaster University ― author of “Why We Can’t Afford the Rich”
Lisa Mckenzie is a research fellow in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, working on issues of social inequality and class stratification through ethnographic research. Lisa brings an unusual and innovative approach to research by means of her extensive experience of bringing the academic world and local community together.