- Title
- Swimming against the neoliberal tide: the campaign to save Mayfield pool
- Creator
- Connor, Tim; Robertson, Bill; Griffiths, Tom; Phelan, Liam
- Relation
- Radical Newcastle p. 232-239
- Relation
- http://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/
- Publisher
- NewSouth Publishing
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2015
- Description
- In 2007, Newcastle City Council (NCC) threatened to close the public pool in the suburb of Mayfield, on the basis that it was no longer economically viable. This chapter focuses on the social processes, and competing discourses, which have been central to an ongoing campaign to save and maintain this community asset. The ideas, actions and decisions which have preserved this pool to date, and those which continue to threaten it, are shaped as much by the ways of thinking about the pool and its place in the community as they are by economic 'realities'. Radicalism in this example is centred on contesting the neoliberal discourse which suggests that decisions about public goods and services should be made primarily on economic grounds. This chapter documents the ways in which the pool has been threatened by the repeated assertion that its value should be measured in financial terms, and how a community has developed a counter narrative, a different understanding that involves both political action and storytelling as a means of resisting and responding. While exploring traditional forms of activism and protest, it also draws on Eric Selbin' s call to return to storytelling, as the campaign to save Mayfield pool has led to the communication of collective understandings of what has been, what is, and what might be, often in the form of stories.
- Subject
- Mayfield; radicalism; public services; story-telling
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1309630
- Identifier
- uon:21917
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781742232591
- Language
- eng
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