Trading crime for culture? Activating territorial stigma through cultural regeneration in Paisley

Discourses of cultural regeneration have proliferated in recent years. Culture, it is argued, provides a means of revitalizing the social, physical and economic fortunes of towns and cities facing myriad challenges in the post-industrial epoch. Aside from the associated economic value attached, it is often assumed that cultural regeneration can improve the reputation of stigmatized places by harnessing positive media representations. However, the ability to challenge stigmatizing discourse sits in contrast to research which implicates media representations of violence, crime and post-industrial decline in the (re)production of territorial stigma. Drawing on Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA), this paper explores this tension in the context of the Scottish town of Paisley. Interview data, online workshops and newspaper representations are utilized to explore how “stigmatizing” discourses of Paisley as blighted by illicit drug use, violent crime and (sub)urban decline are invoked to legitimise cultural regeneration strategies to challenge the town’s negative reputation. This underlines the political utility of territorial stigma in producing a reputation gap whereby cultural regeneration provides an opportunity for the local state to juxtapose visions of a “regenerated”, gentrified Paisley with stigmatizing discourses of post-industrial decay.