This thesis examines how people perceive, express, contest and mobilise civic pride in the city of Nottingham. Through interviews, participant observation and secondary resource analysis, I explore what people involved in the civic life of the city are proud of about Nottingham, what they consider the city’s (civic) identity to be and what it means to promote, defend and practice civic pride. Civic pride has been under-examined in geography and needs better theoretical and empirical insight. I show how civic pride can be thought of as a composite and holistic urban ethos that represents what people feel about the city they live in, what people value and take pride in, and the range of practices and behaviours that people develop to celebrate and protect the city’s identity and autonomy. Civic pride ties together the local, the emotional and the political, and forms a range of discourses and narratives that help produce, mediate, reflect and at times conceal structures of power, identity and inequality. I claim that Nottingham is a friendly, bolshie, East Midlands city; a city with many people who are passionate about Nottingham and civic pride, but who are also uncertain about Nottingham’s identity and aspirations as a city. The findings complement existing debates about cities by showing how civic pride connects with issues of urban regeneration, neoliberalism, localism, social identity and social justice. But I also challenge current literature by offering a more critical and nuanced examination of civic pride, grounded in an understanding of emotions and emotional geographies, that reshapes some of these debates and advances of our understanding of the interface between people, place and politics.
