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Abstract
This paper examines the emerging trend for city governments to declare themselves compassionate. Opening up the ‘compassionate city’ as an object of critical scrutiny, we outline some of the key ways that compassion has been approached in critical scholarship before turning our attention to the politics of these urban commitments to compassion as they are enacted in practice. Focusing on the city of Louisville, where the ‘compassionate city’ imaginary has been taken on both by politicians and by economic, migrant and racial justice activists, we examine the potential of compassion as and in relation to other political grammars, and consider the polyvalent nature of the compassion as it has shaped public debate and political struggle in the city. We argue that this turn toward compassion should be evaluated and understood neither in terms of the good intentions of compassion proponents nor exclusively through analyses that reduce compassion to a single logic to be critiqued, but, instead, in terms of its contingent politics. In doing so, we respond to recent debates about the specificity of the political by emphasizing that the meaning of politics and the political grammars through which we understand urban problems are never the province of critical scholarship alone, and we highlight the value of approaches that can sensitize us to the ways that politics—and its meaning—can itself become a problem as the political nature of the compassionate city is called into question.
Acknowledgements
We want to thank the individuals in Louisville who took the time to speak with us, as well as members of the Space and Political Agency Research Group in Tampere who provided feedback on an earlier draft of this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 The relation between neoliberalism, itself a complex and contestable term, and compassion, is obviously a complicated affair (cf. Williams, Cloke, and Thomas Citation2012). Our point here is primarily to acknowledge that there are potential affinities, and, in line with our broader argument, not to suggest a necessary or inherent connection. In our references to the term neoliberal, we acknowledge the term’s ‘slipperiness,’ yet follow Springer, Birchand and MacLeavy in saying that ‘when we make reference to neoliberalism, we are generally referring to the new political, economic, and social arrangements within society that emphasize market relations, re-tasking the role of the state, and individual responsibility’ (Citation2016, 2).
2 This coalition, represented by a long-running string of centrist democratic mayors--each often easily elected for multiple terms--is long established, although the consolidation of previously distinct city and county governments, has tended to increase the influence of more conservative and suburban voices since 2003 (Savitch and Vogel Citation2004).
3 The Kentucky Supreme Court would later overturn the minimum wage ordinance on the grounds that local governments do not have the authority to set a minimum wage higher than the one set in state law.
4 At the same time, homelessness in the city has been the subject of increasing media attention and political debate since the events of 2017, and the metro government recently made a significant, though temporary, funding allocation to open ‘low-barrier’ shelters that can house individuals who might not be eligible for existing shelters.
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Notes on contributors
Derek Ruez
Derek Ruez is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Space and Political Agency Research Group at Tampere University, Finland.
Trushna Parekh
Trushna Parekh is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Geography, Texas Southern University, USA. Email: [email protected]