Andrew Williams | Cardiff University (original) (raw)

Books by Andrew Williams

Geographies of Postsecularity: Re-envisioning Politics, Subjectivity and Ethics , 2019

This book explores the hopeful possibility that emerging geographies of postsecularity are able t... more This book explores the hopeful possibility that emerging geographies of postsecularity are able to contribute significantly to the understanding of how common life may be shared, and how caring for the common goods of social justice, well-being, equality, solidarity and respect for difference may be imagined and practiced. Drawing on recent geographic theory to recalibrate ideas of the postsecular public sphere, the authors develop the case for postsecularity as a condition of being that is characterised by practices of receptive generosity, rapprochement between religious and secular ethics, and a hopeful re-enchantment and re-shaping of desire towards common life. The authors highlight the contested formation of ethical subjectivity under neoliberalism and the emergence of postsecularity within this process as an ethically-attuned politics which changes relations between religion and secularity and animates novel, hopeful imaginations, subjectivities, and praxes as alternatives to neoliberal norms. The spaces and subjectivities of emergent postsecularity are examined through a series of innovative case studies, including food banks, drug and alcohol treatment, refugee humanitarian activism in Calais, homeless participatory art projects, community responses to the Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand, amongst others. The book also traces the global conditions for postsecularity beyond the Western and predominantly Christian-secular nexus of engagement.

This is a valuable resource for students in several academic disciplines, including geography, sociology, politics, religious studies, international development and anthropology. It will be of great interest to secular and faith-based practitioners working in religion, spirituality, politics or more widely in public policy, urban planning and community development.

This book explores the hopeful possibility that emerging geographies of postsecularity are able t... more This book explores the hopeful possibility that emerging geographies of postsecularity are able to contribute significantly to the understanding of how common life may be shared, and how caring for the common goods of social justice, well-being, equality, solidarity, and respect for difference may be imagined and practiced. Drawing on recent geographic theory to recalibrate ideas of the postsecular public sphere, the authors develop the case for postsecularity as a condition of being that is characterised by practices of receptive generosity, rapprochement between religious and secular ethics, and a hopeful re-enchantment and re-shaping of desire towards common life. The authors highlight the contested formation of ethical subjectivity under neoliberalism and the emergence of postsecularity within this process as an ethically-attuned
politics which changes relations between religion and secularity, and animates novel, hopeful imaginations, subjectivities, and praxes as alternatives to neoliberal norms. The spaces and subjectivities of emergent postsecularity are examined through a series of innovative case studies, including food banks, drug and alcohol treatment, refugee humanitarian activism in Calais, homeless participatory art projects, community responses to the Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand, amongst others. The book also traces the global conditions for postsecularity beyond the Western and predominantly Christian-secular nexus of engagement.
This is a valuable resource for students in several academic disciplines, including geography, sociology, politics, religious studies, international development, and anthropology. It will be of great interest to secular and faith-based practitioners working in religion, spirituality, politics or more widely in public policy, urban planning, and community development.

Edited volumes by Andrew Williams

At a time of heightened neoliberal globalisation and crisis, welfare state retrenchment and desec... more At a time of heightened neoliberal globalisation and crisis, welfare state retrenchment and desecularisation of society, amid uniquely European controversies over immigration, integration and religious-based radicalism, this timely book explores the role played by faith-based organisations (FBOs), which are growing in importance in the provision of social services in the European context. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, the contributions to the volume present original research examples and a pan-European perspective to assess the role of FBOs in combating poverty and various expressions of exclusion and social distress in cities across Europe. This significant and highly topical volume should become a vital reference source for the burgeoning number of studies that are likely follow and will make essential reading for students and academics in social policy, sociology, geography, politics, urban studies and theology/ religious studies.

Each chapter of this important and innovative book narrates the inspiring story of how faith is t... more Each chapter of this important and innovative book narrates the inspiring story of how faith is the prime motivation for an organised response to social and political need in different contexts. This book tells the story of a number of different faith-based organizations based in different parts of Europe, but characterized by the same set of goals and aspirations to bring faith-inspired action into contexts of social injustice and marginalization in urban areas.

Papers by Andrew Williams

Faith-based organisations and exclusion in European cities, 2012

Journal of Rural Studies, 2020

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2019

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2016

This paper offers a critical reappraisal of the politics of food banking in the UK. Existing work... more This paper offers a critical reappraisal of the politics of food banking in the UK. Existing work has raised concerns about the institutionalisation of food banks, with charitable assistance apparently – even if inadvertently – undermining collectivist welfare and deflecting attention from fundamental injustices in the food system. This paper presents original ethnographic work that examines the neglected politics articulated within food banks themselves. Conceptualising food banks as potential spaces of encounter where predominantly middle-class volunteers come into contact with ‘poor others’ (Lawson and Elwood, 2013), we illustrate the ways food banks may both reinforce but also rework and generate new, ethical and political attitudes, beliefs and identities. We also draw attention to the limits of these progressive possibilities and examine the ways in which some food banks continue to operate within a set of highly restrictive, and stigmatising, welfare technologies. By highligh...

Progress in Human Geography, 2016

Geographies of food banks have focused predominantly on issues of neoliberal political-economy an... more Geographies of food banks have focused predominantly on issues of neoliberal political-economy and food insecurity. In this paper, we trace alternative understandings of food banking – as spaces of care, and as liminal spaces of encounter capable of incubating political and ethical values, practices and subjectivities that challenge neoliberal austerity. Our aim is to develop a conceptual approach to voluntary welfare capable both of holding in tension the ambivalent and contradictory dynamics of care and welfare in the meantime(s), and of underlining some of the more hopeful and progressive possibilities that can arise in and through such spaces of care.

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2014

In the UK the current Coalition government has introduced an unprecedented set of reforms to welf... more In the UK the current Coalition government has introduced an unprecedented set of reforms to welfare, public services, and local governance under the rubric of ‘localism’. Conventional analytics of neoliberalism have commonly portrayed the impacts of these changes in the architectures of governance in blanket terms: as an utterly regressive dilution of local democracy; as an extension of conservative political technology by which state welfare is denuded in favour of market-led individualism; and as a further politicised subjectification of the charitable self. Such seemingly hegemonic grammars of critique can ignore or underestimate the progressive possibilities for creating new ethical and political spaces in amongst the neoliberal canvas. In this paper we investigate the localism agenda using alternative interpretative grammars that are more open to the recognition of interstitial politics of resistance and experimentation that are springing up within, across, and beyond formatio...

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2012

The increasing prominence of faith-based organisations (FBOs) in providing welfare in the UK has ... more The increasing prominence of faith-based organisations (FBOs) in providing welfare in the UK has typically been regarded as a by-product of neoliberalism, as the gaps left by shrinking public service provision and the contracting out of service delivery have been filled by these and other Third Sector organisations. In this way, FBOs have been represented as merely being co-opted as inexpensive resource providers into the wider governmentalities of neoliberal politics. In this paper we critically question how the concept of neoliberalism has been put to work in accounts of voluntary sector cooption, and argue instead for a recognition of different manifestations of secularism and religion, and their connections to changing political—economic and social contexts. Using the illustration of one particular FBO in the UK, we trace how neoliberalism can be co-constituted through the involvement of FBOs, which can offer various pathways of resistance in and through the pursuit of alternati...

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

It is widely supposed that food banks and key aspects of the UK’s wider food banking system – re... more It is widely supposed that food banks and key aspects of the UK’s wider food banking system – referral networks, eligibility tests, food vouchers, corporate sponsorship and the close entanglement of food charity with local and national government – are new to the UK, either imported from North America or emerging ex nihilio with the Trussell Trust in the early 2000s. Drawing on local and national newspaper archives and data from Companies House, the Charity Commission and internet archiving website the WayBack Machine, we present a genealogy that challenges these origins and situates UK food banking in a set of historically contingent practices, alliances and struggles many of which are nowadays forgotten. Contributing to work on policy mobilities in the voluntary sector, we pay particular attention to the development of the UK’s contemporary food banking system through the movement of ideas and practices between different organisations (for example, between food banks, corporate food retailers and US tech companies) and different charitable fields (including overseas aid and homelessness), between the charitable sector and the state, and between different places both within and outside the UK. The resulting genealogy not only extends, and reframes, the history of British food banking – including claims as to the recent institutionalisation of food banks in a neoliberal state welfare apparatus – but works to disrupt the rationalities and ‘regime(s) of acceptability’ that underpin and maintain the modus operandi of many current-day food banks.

Health & Place, 2020

While the historical importance of religion in alcohol treatment is well known, the size, scope a... more While the historical importance of religion in alcohol treatment is well known, the size, scope and significance of contemporary activities remain unclear. Here we begin to address this gap in knowledge by presenting results from a mixed methods study of faith-based alcohol treatment in England and Wales. The paper begins by mapping location, religious affiliation, organisational structure and service provision. We then discuss evidence regarding challenges, opportunities and tensions bound up with faith-based organisations ‘filling gaps’ left by long term restructuring of alcohol service provision, recent ‘austerity’ funding cuts and relationships between secular and faith-based organisations. In the final substantive section, we engage with questions of ethics and care by focusing on the internal workings of a subset of faith-based programs that make requirements for religious participation. Drawing on the variegated experiences of service-users, we reflect on the ethics of religious conversion in faith-based alcohol treatment. The conclusion offers policy and practice relevant insights and outlines areas for future research on religion, austerity, and alcohol treatment.

Journal of Rural Studies, 2020

This paper builds on a nascent literature on rural austerity to explore the variegated geographie... more This paper builds on a nascent literature on rural austerity to explore the variegated geographies of austerity and food banking in rural areas of England and Wales. The paper makes three key contributions. First, drawing on a range of existing and newly updated datasets on local authority spending power and service spending, changes to welfare benefits, benefit sanctions, and local welfare assistance schemes we use the Office for National Statistics (ONS) 2011 Rural-Urban Classification of Local Authorities to provide the first comprehensive analysis of austerity in rural England and Wales. We outline the variegated nature of rural austerity and examine the ways in which new geographies of austerity are overwriting and compounding problems of rural poverty in the UK. Second, we combine newly available data from the Trussell Trust and Independent Food Aid Network to outline a geography of food banking in rural England and Wales, highlighting the uneven distribution of food aid across rural areas and discuss some of the problems rural locations pose to both those seeking and providing food aid. Third, drawing on interviews with food bank managers, volunteers and clients in two very different rural areas we examine how different rural contexts produce different experiences of and responses to poverty and food insecurity, paying particular attention to localised cultures of charity, welfare and deservingness. We conclude by setting out a new research agenda around which scholars might further explore the relationships between austerity, food insecurity and food banking in rural areas.

Antipode, 2019

This paper seeks to extend geographic thinking on the changing constitution of the UK welfare sta... more This paper seeks to extend geographic thinking on the changing constitution of the UK welfare state, suggesting the need to supplement ideas of the “shadow state” with an analysis of the blurring of the bureaucratic practices through which welfare is now delivered by public, private and third sector providers alike. Focusing on the growing convergence of the bureaucratic practices of benefits officials and food bank organisations, we interrogate the production of moral distance that characterise both. We reveal the ideological values embedded in voucher and referral systems used by many food banks, and the ways in which these systems further stigmatise and exclude people in need of support. Contrasting these practices with those of a variety of “ethical insurgents”, we suggest that food banks are sites of both the further cementing and of challenge to the injustices of Britain's new welfare apparatus.

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2019

This paper contributes to critical discussions of austerity by examining the constructions of sca... more This paper contributes to critical discussions of austerity by examining the constructions of scarcity that underpin it. Specifically, it shows how notions of scarcity (re)emergent in a period of austerity have shaped materially insufficient and stigmatising welfare systems. We do this through the example of UK food banks. We suggest that under austerity a particular moral economy of scarcity has become embedded at the level of common-sense, including in the common-sense of many of those distributing food aid. In UK food banks this moral economy is shaped by images of the 'empty cupboard' and discourses of absolute hunger which normalise practices of (self)rationing and exacerbate food insecurity. Tracing attempts by some food bank managers and volunteers to challenge this moral economy we conclude with a critical agenda for academics and practitioners to rethink relationships between welfare, austerity, and scarcity.

The paper provides a platform for geographical reflection on the hidden struggles ethnographers f... more The paper provides a platform for geographical reflection on the hidden struggles ethnographers face working in the area of religion, addiction and drug treatment. Specifically, it examines the complex ethical and practical dilemmas involved in residential ethnography inside a faith-based therapeutic community working in the area of addiction and rehabilitation. Residential ethnography provided valuable insights into social life in therapeutic community, and more broadly, offers an ethical and participatory approach to research in closed institutional settings. Residential immersion in faith-based therapeutic environments however raised significant challenges around identity management; access and consent; and the dilemma of ‘mixed loyalties’ – a term that describes a set of ethical practices characterised by ethical conflict, compromise and negotiation in which the researcher, by nature of their participation, is expected to conform to certain values, practices, and procedures that may contradict their own personal ethics. To ground discussion on the variegated and contested nature of mixed loyalties, this paper examines the exercise of religious power and the ways ethnographers become enrolled in, and must negotiate, a series of power-dynamics that are unclear, uncomfortable, and potentially exclusionary. By illustrating the difficult decisions ethnographers must make when negotiating pressures to uphold – or challenge – religious beliefs and practices in faith-based addiction treatment settings, this paper calls for greater critical reflection on the ways geographers are implicated in the field and the practical ethics of engagement used to navigate ethical tensions.

Geographies of Postsecularity: Re-envisioning Politics, Subjectivity and Ethics , 2019

This book explores the hopeful possibility that emerging geographies of postsecularity are able t... more This book explores the hopeful possibility that emerging geographies of postsecularity are able to contribute significantly to the understanding of how common life may be shared, and how caring for the common goods of social justice, well-being, equality, solidarity, and respect for difference may be imagined and practiced. Drawing on recent geographic theory to recalibrate ideas of the postsecular public sphere, the authors develop the case for postsecularity as a condition of being that is characterised by practices of receptive generosity, rapprochement between religious and secular ethics, and a hopeful re-enchantment and re-shaping of desire towards common life. The authors highlight the contested formation of ethical subjectivity under neoliberalism and the emergence of postsecularity within this process as an ethically-attuned
politics which changes relations between religion and secularity, and animates novel, hopeful imaginations, subjectivities, and praxes as alternatives to neoliberal norms. The spaces and subjectivities of emergent postsecularity are examined through a series of innovative case studies, including food banks, drug and alcohol treatment, refugee humanitarian activism in Calais, homeless participatory art projects, community responses to the Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand, amongst others. The book also traces the global conditions for postsecularity beyond the Western and predominantly Christian-secular nexus of engagement.
This is a valuable resource for students in several academic disciplines, including geography, sociology, politics, religious studies, international development, and anthropology. It will be of great interest to secular and faith-based practitioners working in religion, spirituality, politics or more widely in public policy, urban planning, and community development.

Faith-based organisations and exclusion in European cities, 2012

Journal of Rural Studies, 2020

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2019

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2016

Progress in Human Geography, 2016

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2014

Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2012

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

Health & Place, 2020

Journal of Rural Studies, 2020

Antipode, 2019

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2019

This paper offers new theoretical and empirical insights into the emotional and spiritual geograp... more This paper offers new theoretical and empirical insights into the emotional and spiritual geographies of religion in therapeutic landscapes designated for marginal and vulnerable populations. Drawing on original empirical work conducted in a Pentecostal Christian therapeutic community in the UK working in the area of addiction and rehabilitation, this paper investigates the spiritual landscapes of Pentecostal worship, and considers the emotional, spiritual and therapeutic sensibilities residents attach to, and experience during, practices of worship and prayer. By examining the complex intersections between belief, embodiment and performativity of religious practice, I illustrate how the distinct patterning of worship space can differently open out, and close down, capacities and affective atmospheres of the divine. Attention is given to the different ways in which the residents experienced this worship space, and the extent to which their presence therein created a range of therapeutic - and anti-therapeutic - experiences. Drawing on these narratives, this paper argues how the contingent configuration of care/control might be seen as both constraining and empowering for residents, underlining the importance for geographers of religion to ground conceptualisations of the staging and performance of spiritual landscapes in the divergent sensibilities and ethics of engagement individuals bring to these sites

This paper examines and critically interprets the interrelations between religion and the Occupy ... more This paper examines and critically interprets the interrelations between religion and the Occupy movements of 2011. It presents three main arguments. First, through an examination of the Occupy Movement in the UK and USA—and in particular of the two most prominent Occupy camps (Wall Street and London Stock Exchange)—the paper traces the emergence of postsecularity evidenced in the rapprochement of religious and secular actors, discourses, and practices in the event-spaces of Occupy. Second, it examines the specific set of challenges that Occupy has posed to the Christian church in the UK and USA, arguing that religious participation in the camps served at least in part to identify wider areas of religious faith that are themselves in need of redemption. Third, the paper considers the challenges posed by religious groups to Occupy, not least in the emphasis on postmaterial values in pathways to resistance against contemporary capitalism.