Deflecting national ideologies: Exploring identity management trajectories of medium-sized cities

Abstract

This paper focuses on the agency exhibited by municipal governments in modifying or resisting neoliberal policies, by investigating their efforts to manufacture favorable competitive urban identities. In particular, this paper emphasizes how national ideologies are (re)articulated at a local level by medium-sized cities placed within different national contexts and, thus, exposed to different orientations toward neoliberal principles. By performing historical urban research in Leicester (UK) and Reims (France), this study identifies different expressions of local agency through which cities present their identities on a global scenario, by responding to similar pressure of deindustrialization and urban competition from mid-1970s. If the discursive strategies of both cities reproduce signs of respective national ideologies, findings highlight two trajectories whereby cities negotiate and rework the main narratives underpinning those national ideologies. The concepts of active and passive deflection are offered in order to capture the role of local agency and conceptualize how national ideologies are appropriated locally by medium-sized cities in the attempt to engage with perceived increasing world-level forces.

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