Business Improvement Associations and the Presentation of the Business Voice

Abstract

One important finding that emerges from the literature on Business Improvement Associations (BIAs) is that businesses are, quite often, not as unified and homogeneous as what is proclaimed by their “business voice”—their collective values, visions, and ethos. What has not received full consideration is the nuanced, complex, and complicated manner in which the business voice is produced and sustained. Intended as a corrective to this void, I explore the ways that BIAs in Toronto and Vancouver have attended to problems of public disorder. I suggest that the ways BIAs frame and construct public disorder as problematic to businesses, and the ways this is publicized, can be understood as a well-orchestrated and choreographed performance that encompasses both a front and back region. The front region tells the story that public disorder is inimical to businesses and does so by relying on particular tactics and techniques. The back region reveals a more complicated picture—first, with respect to the ways the issues are framed and (re) produced, which also has the effect of reinforcing and sustaining the narrative that is presented in the front region, and second, with respect to the fragility and fractured state of the “business community” that is often in disarray and characterized by disunity, disagreements, and disharmony

Key words:

• Business Improvement Associations
• public disorder
• Erving Goffman

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the First National Conference on Critical Perspectives: Criminology and Social Justice, University of Ottawa, April 30, 2011 and the 6th International Conference of the Research Network, Private Urban Governance and Gated Communities, Istanbul Technical University, September 10, 2011, where I received helpful comments. I am also grateful to Randy Lippert, the two anonymous reviewers, and Elvin Wyly, the co-editor of Urban Geography, for their very helpful and constructive feedback. The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

² The concepts of “front” and “back regions” are explained in greater detail in the following paragraph.

³ I rely primarily on this earlier work, though the corpus of Goffman's work, deriving from symbolic interactionism, is within this dramaturgical perspective (Goffman, 1961, 1963, 1967, 1971). Goffman's work has enjoyed a long shelf life, as evinced in two recent papers that use the concepts of performance and stage to explore jury trials (Rose et al., 2010) and the reproduction of white masculinity (Hughey, 2011).

⁴ In some circumstances, defpending on the interaction and the performance, the front and back region can double for each other (Goffman, 1959/1956, pp. 126–128), a point that I take up later. Goffman also speaks of an “outside region,” which is neither front nor back (Goffman, 1959/1956, p. 135). I do not address this, as it is irrelevant to the purposes here.

⁵ For the sake of anonymity, I refrain from mentioning the names of the interviewees and in most instances, the Associations they represent, unless I am drawing on publicly accessible documents.

⁶ The Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) is an independent adjudicative tribunal that hears appeals and applications from concerned parties with respect to land use disputes. Some issues that the OMB deals with include: official plans, subdivision plans, zoning by-laws, development charges, and minor variances from local by-laws (see Chipman, 2002, for a good overview of the history and workings of the OMB).

⁷ Goffman uses the term “front” in two ways, both pertinent to the discussion to follow. The first, as elaborated above, refers to a particular space, as well as a “personal front,” such as the expressive characteristics of the performer (Goffman, 1959/1956, pp. 22–30). He also speaks of a “false front” that involves deliberate deception and fraud (Goffman, 1959/1956, p. 59). With respect to the latter meaning, however, it is not my position that the business discourse is necessarily false or fake. Rather, my position is that it has a particular form to it, ranging from the hyperbolic to abstract and obscure language. It is only in this specific sense that I align my analysis with Goffman's phrase, “false front.”

⁸ This Note was provided to me by a representative of Tourism Vancouver with whom I conducted an interview three days after its release. The Note was to be distributed to various institutions associated with tourism that, in turn, could distribute it to their clientele.

⁹ One example that nicely shows the way discourse influences other areas is during the formation of BIDs, where “many BIDs seem to have been created simply because of the effect of copying an adjacent area” (Lloyd et al., 2003, p. 309).

¹⁰ This latter comment is illuminating, because it shows that the area at that time was unlike other areas. However, the particular ways in which the representative made sense of these issues highlight how she had fully subscribed to the business voice, using it to make sense and form her reality.

¹¹ This view that panhandling, regardless of its form, poses a problem to businesses and therefore ought to be prohibited is best evinced in the comments of a representative from Toronto, who opined: “All panhandling is aggressive behaviour, philosophically, that is.”