Articulating place: Towards a conjunctural analysis of public health

Abstract

‘Place’ is again circulating as a policy solution to improve health, wealth and wellbeing. But while place-basedpolicymaking is quickly becoming ‘common sense’, we stress the need to think conjuncturally about the changing place of health. By conceptualising places as open articulations—rather than straightforwardly local territories—much wider geographies come into view. In dialogue with decentred approaches to public health which take seriously competing policy narratives, we therefore situate place-based policymaking within ongoing struggles over places and their pasts. To develop our argument, we look at public health through the lens of Wigan, north west England, which has become an unlikely ‘exemplar’ for place-based reforms. Framed by different, often contradictory, narratives of loss, control, and hope, it may be the talk of the town, but we reject the politics of self-responsibilisation implicit within recent attention towards purportedly ‘left behind’ places. Instead, we foreground how Wigan has been shaped by wider forces and relations such as de-industrialisation, postcolonialism, austerity and state restructuring, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. By locating the many crises, contradictions and antagonisms conditioning public health in this conjuncture, we can start to articulate political alternatives and identify possibilities for making policy otherwise.