Steve Pile

Biographic Data

ID104175
NAMESteve Pile
GIVEN NAMESSteve
FAMILY NAMEPile
SIGNATUREPILE S
AFFILIATIONSThe Open University
ORCID0000-0003-1503-2382
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS46
TOTAL CITATIONS850
AUTHOR COUNT44
EDITOR COUNT2
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1990
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX11

  • Eyre and Eton in Camden: Uncovering the Colonial Histories of Three North London Housing Estates

    Open AccessEmre Yazıcı, Edanur Yazici et al.ARTICLEThe London Journal2026

    This article analyses the colonial histories of three north London housing estates. A kilometre apart from each other and built under different social policy conditions, Hilgrove, Chalcots, and Alexandra Road Estates all share colonial histories. We trace the role of the slave-holding Eyre Estate in influencing the architecture of Hilgrove Estate; uncover how the Eyre Estate clashed with residents and the London Borough of Camden over Alexandra R…

  • Social housing as a social infrastructure: The coexistence of divergent socials on a north London council estate

    Open AccessSteve Pile, Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum et al.ARTICLEUrban Geography2026References: 10

    This paper examines social housing as an “infrastructure of social infrastructures” through a case study of playgrounds on the Hilgrove Estate, north London. Drawing on ethnographic research, surveys and creative interventions, we interrogate normative assumptions about social infrastructure – particularly the claim that “good” infrastructure produces “good” sociality. While Eric Klinenberg’s influential work positions playgrounds as sites of loo…

  • What’s in a hyphen? Insights from the field on co-production as methodology

    Open AccessSusannah Cramer-Greenbaum, Emre Yazıcı et al.ARTICLESocial & Cultural Geography2026Cited by: 1References: 51

    Drawing on our study of refugee women’s urban mobilities, we examine the mechanisms and infrastructure of arts-based co-production in geography. While co-productive approaches are often celebrated for their transformative potential, we interrogate this promise through a series of workshops culminating in a co-produced film with nine women who received bicycles through the charity, The Bike Project. We ask how the ‘co’ in co-production may obscure…

  • Entanglements of race and migration in the (open) city: Analytical and normative tensions of the sociological imagination

    Open AccessMichael Keith, Michael C Keith et al.ARTICLEThe Sociological Review2025References: 55

    This article considers the interface of taxonomies of race and migration crystallised through the materialities of the contemporary city in the shadow of the 7th anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire. It draws on multi-method empirical research that interrogates the notion of the open city. The article proposes that 'entanglement' and 'contaminations' of material and cultural formations confound some claims made in the name of the good city, rec…

  • Representing London: Making and claiming the city

    K Murji, Susannah Cramer-Greenbaum et al.ARTICLECity2024References: 6

    What does it mean to represent a city? We examine this question through drawing from and seeking to read across two somewhat distinct meanings of representation, stemming from cultural theory and political studies. The reason for approaching representation in this way is an interest in how elected representatives claim the city. Based on interviews with members of the London Assembly, we take a transversal cut across party and geographical lines …

  • London is avocado on toast’: The urban imaginaries of the #LondonIsOpen campaign

    Open AccessEmre Yazıcı, K Murji et al.ARTICLEUrban Studies2023Cited by: 1References: 27

    This article examines the production, representations and reactions to the #LondonIsOpen campaign to ask how urban imaginaries are produced and what they entail for understanding the city. The analysis considers how the idea of a cosmopolitan, diverse and multicultural city is framed, what it includes and excludes and the distinct geographies of the city it produces. It draws on three data sources: documentary analysis of videos used in the campa…

  • A progressive sense of place and the open city: Micro-spatialities and micro-conflicts on a north London council estate

    Open AccessSteve Pile, Emre Yazıcı et al.ARTICLEGeoforum2023Cited by: 4References: 6

    Doreen Massey’s progressive sense of place (2005) and Richard Sennett’s ethical case for the open city (2018) rely on seeing space as open. It is openness that guarantees an open future, an openness to others, and the possibility of a progressive politics. Curiously, the Garden City, for both, becomes a test case for a progressive sense of the open city. For Massey, her lived experience of growing up in Wythenshawe reveals both the possibility of…

  • Politicization, postpolitics and the open city: Openness, closedness and the spatialisation of the political

    Open AccessSteve Pile, M Keith et al.ARTICLEEnvironment and Planning D…2023Cited by: 1References: 47

    The idea of the open city has been used both conceptually and analytically to understand the politics of the city. The contrast between the open city and the closed city relies, in part, upon an understanding of the global systems that enfold cities and, consequently, the politics that are - and are not - afforded cities. Notions such as the postpolitical city depend not on temporality where the city has ceased to be political, but a spatialisati…

  • A public inquiry into Freud’s influence upon Cambridge

    Open AccessSteve PileARTICLEHistory of the Human Sciences2022

  • Learning from Stoke‐on‐Trent: Multiple ontologies, ontological alterity and the city

    Open AccessSteve PileARTICLETransactions of the Institute of…2022Cited by: 3References: 55

    This paper seeks to learn from Stoke‐on‐Trent by asking questions about the ontologies of cities. It does so by counterposing two accounts of Stoke‐on‐Trent: one grounded in a critique of neoliberal urban development (or rather post‐industrial decline), and the other grounded in the experiences of Spiritualists. Placed side‐by‐side, Stoke‐on‐Trent demonstrates that cities accommodate more than one lived reality or mode of existence (ontology). Th…

  • Bodies, Affects, Politics: The Clash of Bodily Regimes

    Open AccessSteve PileBOOKBodies, Affects, Politics2021

  • Talking with the dead: Spirit mediumship, affect and embodiment in Stoke‐on‐Trent

    Open AccessNadia Bartolini, Sara Mackian et al.ARTICLETransactions of the Institute of…2017Cited by: 10References: 32

    While Spiritualism has attracted much attention in other disciplines, geographers have largely ignored it. However, we agree with Holloway (2006 Enchanted spaces: the séance, affect, and geographies of religion Annals of the Association of American Geographers , 96 , pp. 182–187) that Spiritualism presents conceptual challenges that make it worthy of more attention. As Holloway suggests, the themes of affect, embodiment and materiality are partic…

  • Spirit knows: Materiality, memory and the recovery of Spiritualist places and practices in Stoke-on-Trent

    Open AccessNadia Bartolini, Sara Mackian et al.ARTICLESocial & Cultural Geography2017Cited by: 7References: 16

    This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record

  • The place of spirit: Modernity and the geographies of spirituality

    Open AccessNadia Bartolini, Robert Chris et al.ARTICLEProgress in Human Geography2016Cited by: 34References: 19

    In this paper, we seek to map out the specific geographies through which spatialities of religion have been imagined. These involve such spatial metaphors as islands, networks and spheres. Less attention has been given to new forms of spirituality, and to the consequences of thinking through these for our understanding of modernity itself. We argue that modernity, religion and spirituality are entangled and spread through daily life. We conclude …

  • Passionate forms and the problem of subjectivity: Freud, Frau Emmy von N. and the unconscious communication of affect

    Open AccessJan Campbell, Steve PileARTICLESubjectivity2015

  • Beastly minds: A topological twist in the rethinking of the human in nonhuman geographies using two of Freud's case studies, Emmy von N. and the Wolfman

    Open AccessSteve PileARTICLETransactions of the Institute of…2013Cited by: 6References: 19

    This paper takes its cue from recent work in nonhuman geographies that has sought to think about the relationship between the human and nonhuman topologically . While nonhuman geographies have well‐developed analyses of the topologies of regions and networks, recent work is supplementing these with other topological understandings. Yet, this work can be taken further. To this end, this paper explores the relationship between the human and nonhuma…

  • Psychics, crystals, candles and cauldrons: Alternative Spiritualities and the Question of Their Esoteric Economies

    Nadia Bartolini, Robert Chris et al.ARTICLESocial & Cultural Geography2013Cited by: 9References: 22

    Studies of alternative and 'New Age' spiritualities and of the paranormal in popular culture hint at the existence of underlying economic relationships that are, though small in size by some measures, both significant and influential. This paper seeks to foreground the economic relationships underpinning the beliefs, practices and activities associated with alternative spiritualities. For, as we argue, these have either been marginalised in most …

  • For a geographical understanding of affect and emotions

    Open AccessSteve PileARTICLETransactions of the Institute of…2011Cited by: 18References: 12

  • Distant feelings: Telepathy and the Problem of Affect Transfer Over Distance

    Open AccessSteve PileARTICLETransactions of the Institute of…2011Cited by: 10References: 14

    This paper addresses the problem of affect transfer at a distance. Geographers have been creative in importing concepts that seek to account for the transmission of affect. These include terms such as suggestion and contagion, and indeed transmission itself. In this paper, I explore the problem through the concept of telepathy. Telepathy, understood as ‘distant feeling’ or ‘feeling at a distance’, is directed at the problem of the transfer of aff…

  • Spatialities of Skin: The Chafing of Skin, Ego and Second Skins in T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom

    Open AccessSteve PileARTICLEBody & Society2011Cited by: 2References: 10

    This article explores the relationship between skin, ego and second skins. It does so conceptually by re-examining Freud’s suggestion, in The Ego and the Id, that the ego is first and foremost a bodily entity, while also being a projection of a surface (i.e. skin). Drawing upon Anzieu, a dynamic model of inter-weaving surfaces can be seen to underpin an understanding of the ego — and skin ego. This model is fundamentally spatialized. Even so, an …

  • Skin, race and space: The clash of bodily schemas in Frantz Fanon's Black Skins, White Masks and Nella Larsen's Passing

    Open AccessSteve PileARTICLECultural Geographies2011Cited by: 10References: 7

    Nella Larsen's novel Passing offers the opportunity to reconsider the relationship between race and space. The novel provides an account of space that is highly racialized. It describes 1920s Chicago as having heavily proscribed white and black spaces. However, race itself is far more uncertain. The novel's two main characters, Irene and Clare, though black by blood in US American racial schematics, are both able to pass as white. Their skin colo…

  • Telepathy and its vicissitudes: Freud, thought transference and the hidden lives of the (repressed and non-repressed) unconscious

    Open AccessJan Campbell, Steve PileARTICLESubjectivity2010

  • Intimate Distance: The Unconscious Dimensions of the Rapport Between Researcher and Researched

    Steve PileARTICLEThe Professional Geographer2010Cited by: 16References: 12

    To explore how psychoanalysis might contribute to the methodology of human geography, this article returns to Freud's experiences of psycho-logical analysis before he develops psychoanalysis as a distinct understanding of the mind, identity formation, and subjectivity. Going back over the early history of psychoanalysis, Freud's psychoanalysis can be seen as an attempt to solve a set of problems inherent in late nineteenth-century psycho-logical …

  • Topographies of the body-and-mind: Skin Ego, Body Ego, and the film ‘Memento

    Open AccessSteve PileARTICLESubjectivity2009Cited by: 8References: 3

  • Emotions and affect in recent human geography: Emotions and affect in recent human geography

    Open AccessSteve PileARTICLETransactions of the Institute of…2009Cited by: 454References: 52

    This paper seeks to examine both how emotions have been explored in emotional geography and also how affect has been understood in affectual geography. By tracing out the conceptual influences underlying emotional and affectual geography, I seek to understand both the similarities and differences between their approaches. I identify three key areas of agreement: a relational ontology that privileges fluidity; a privileging of proximity and intima…