Postcapitalism and the Post Office: The role of public services in utopian futures

Abstract

This thesis presents an investigation into the condition of possibilities for utopian social transformation in the UK, through a historic, empirical and speculative sociological account of the UK’s Post Office. Beginning with the unusual sense of political possibility that accompanied Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the UK’s Labour Party, the thesis observes how this countered to some degree a long noted inability to imagine transformed social futures beyond capitalism, but that the Corbyn Project and the theoretical literature with which it was associated - postcapitalism - failed to sufficiently connect with the prevalent experience from which people project their imaginaries of what might be socially and politically desirable and realisable. Identifying the need to better understand the nature of the experience projects for social transformation would be intending to engage with, the thesis uses concepts from Utopian Studies - Concrete Utopia and Education of Desire - to bring to the forefront the necessity of connecting profound aspects of experience, to the work of mutual need-meeting, whilst maintaining a sense of urgent pedagogical mission, regarding the utopian possibilities such work materially and practically embodies. Such work and such a pedagogical mission, the thesis argues, can best be carried out through a utopian reimagining of the concept of public services. Deepening this understanding of prevalent experience and of concrete utopian agency, the thesis examines the harms done to these in the transition from Keynesianism to neoliberalism, via the work of Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse, and suggests specific ways public services could intervene to transcend these harms. The thesis then develops a sociological framework for investigating the implicit trajectories this history has bequeathed - via the present empirical moment, and into the possible futures that might arise from it - by combining the utopian-sociological methodologies of Erik Olin Wright and Ruth Levitas. The thesis details the methodology and methods through which the empirical aspect of this investigation was carried out: participant-observation of the “ecologies of possibility” surrounding post offices in Manchester and Salford, via repeated walking journeys between 44 post office sites; and possibility-focused walking interviews conducted between post offices with 17 participants. These are complemented by speculative analysis of the Post Office, in which the utopian possibilities suggested by empirically encountered post offices are envisaged, and via a short report from an imagined transformed future, which the Post Office has played a key role in bringing about. Through these means, it was possible to discern changes to public experience, exemplified by changes in Post Office services and changes to postal delivery services, which were implicated in participants’ experiences of social change, including senses of loss of community associated with apparently inevitable technology-driven change. Participants were mostly unforthcoming when it came to speculating about the possibility of radical systemic transformation. Implicated in this, the thesis argues, is the loss of “imaginative infrastructures” that public services, including the Post Office, had previously made some significant contribution to. The thesis argues that were people afforded greater ability to make concrete utopian change to their localities, within a broader system facilitating such intervention, this would begin the work of re-establishing these imaginative infrastructures and reviving a sense of transformational social possibility.

Date of Award	20 May 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Nicholas Thoburn (Main Supervisor) & Peter Mcmylor (Co Supervisor)