Liveable lives

The main research objective is to move beyond exclusion/inclusion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer (LGBTQ) communities in UK and India creating a liveability model that can be adapted globally. Whilst work has been done to explore the implications of Equalities legislation, including contesting the normalisations of neo-liberalisms, there has yet to be an investigation into what might make every day spaces liveable for LGBTQ people. This project addresses social exclusion, not only through identifying exclusions, but also by exploring how life might become liveable in everyday places in two very different contexts.

Achievements of equalities legislation are important but limited

In 2013 the Marriage (Same Sex) Act passed in the UK, and in India the Delhi High Court's reading down Indian Penal Code 377 in 2009 to decriminalize sexual acts between consenting same-sex people was overturned by the Supreme Court. In the UK, the 'gains' have not been felt equally by all LGBTQ people, and organising and activism continues around concerns of LGBTQ people that have not (yet) been adequately addressed, such as ensuring safety from transphobia, biphobia and homophobia. In India, reactions to, and the effects of, the reinstating of penal code 377, both in relation to activist protests and authority crackdowns, have varied widely across the country. These different contexts are being used to explore liveable lives as more than lives that are just 'bearable' and moves beyond norms of happiness and wellbeing.

Liveable Lives: a concept with practical applications?

This project is exploring whether and how ideas about Liveable Lives might advance additional/alternative initiatives to progress positive social change for LGBTQ people. The concept of ‘liveable’ lives originates with Judith Butler, a professor at the University of California, a philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics and the fields of feminist, queer and literary theory. Judith Butler writes about experiencing living life as ‘liveable’, by which she means it is more than bearable. For her, liveability is an important condition of being human, and not everyone’s life is liveable, some lives are about survival. This research is exploring what a liveable life might be when LGBTQ people are thriving and experiencing a life that is like life.

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Project aims

The main research objective of this research is to move beyond the analysis of exclusion/inclusion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer (LGBTQ) communities in UK and India. It uses innovative transnational PAR methodologies and a mixed methods design that refuse the Global North-progress/Global South-backward dichotomies in order to:

  • transnationally identify what makes lives liveable for marginalised LGBTQ people. This will not take a comparative approach as this presumes two places have distinct, static elements that are comparable that can be mined for similarities and differences. It will look instead at the ways in which places produce differential liveabilities in the cracks and fissures of regulatory normativities, where legislative change has supposedly been achieved and where it is still ongoing. How can transnational activisms create and demand new forms of social justice?
  • consider liveable lives constituted through policy and cultural indicators rather than focusing on violence/crime and/or legislative change, as has been the focus of measures of inclusion/equalities. How can social marginalisation be addressed given the emerging issues of legislative inclusions? What can make life more liveable beyond legal protections for those marginalised by their sexual and gender difference in India and the UK?
  • spatially explore liveability locally/nationally/transnationally, questioning the homogeneity of national proclamations of 'inclusion'/'exclusion', understanding that measures of national/supra-national legislative changes are not necessarily locally experienced.
  • engage with the ways in which intersectionalities/multiple marginalisations rework liveabilities working for and against the inclusion of some LGBTQ people such that, for example the 'gay capital of the UK', 91快活林, continues to be experienced as transphobic.
  • examine moves beyond inclusion/exclusion. This spatially nuanced research engagement both identifies what might change in everyday spaces and then experiments with producing new social-spatial orders, exploring how places can be made liveable for marginalised LGBTQ people. How life might be made liveable within and beyond these broader legislative contexts? What makes place safer, more useable and how everyday practices can be altered to form new social relations?

Project findings and impact

The concept of Liveable Lives has the potential to develop new ways of thinking and talking about the concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) people, and might help to inform new initiatives and strategies beyond the equalities agenda.

Research team

Kath Browne

Niharika Banerjea

Leela Baksi

Poushali Basak

Nick McGlynn

Ranjita Biswas

Rukmini Banerjee

Sumita Basu Bandyopadhyay

Outputs

To follow

Partners

Economic & Social Research Council

Sappho For Equality

University of Southern Indiana