Chapter Three: Routes, Rhythms and Reactions

The focus of this chapter is to present the thematic findings gathered from the first stage of the fieldwork. The key themes which emerged can be grouped under the following headings: first, gender, including order, control and sanitisation, and exclusion of the feminine; second, the performativity of the City, including insider/outsider status, the repression of the outsider and the endless repetition of the insider; and, third, the sense of the City as an intense, rarefied space with distinctive rhythms. How the materiality both shapes these themes and in turn is shaped by them is extensively discussed in each section.

One of the most immediate surprises that I had, on starting the fieldwork, was in regards to my own subject position within the setting. I worked in the City for several years in the late 1990s and then again in the early 2000s, a 10-year period in total, working for both a ‘Big Four’ professional services organisation and for a reinsurance broker. Following that period, I was self-employed for five years, with most of my clients being City based, so travelled regularly to the setting. As a consequence of this, I know the area well, associate it with my working life and thought it would hold few surprises for me. In fact, my status as a university-based researcher, in the setting not to go to an office job but to wander, and in the course of this to observe, record and analyse, threw my composure considerably. On the first morning that I travelled in for my first day of fieldwork, I felt out of place the moment I stepped on the train. I thought I had been sensible by dressing casually and practically with the weather in mind (it was cold and wet), but my lack of formal corporate attire made me feel noticeable. At Liverpool Street station, while dithering as to which direction I should head towards, I found myself walking against the flow and being almost knocked sideways by the crowd. I was nervous about starting the fieldwork and full of doubts as to whether I would actually observe anything of interest; this hesitancy was contrary to the purposive sense of early morning commuters all around me, as this quote from my field notes shows: