Jordanna Bailkin is the Jon Bridgman Endowed Professor in History at the University of Washington, where she teaches British, European, and imperial history. She is the author of The Culture of Property (2004), The Afterlife of Empire (2012), and Unsettled (2018), as well as articles on the history of murder in colonial India, tattooing in colonial Burma, decolonization and radio, and the history of archives during decolonization. Her forthcoming book is Friends and Neighbors: Taking Care in Britain. 

This lecture focuses on histories of neighboring in Britain and zealous debates about “good” and “bad” neighbors that have characterized our pandemic era. Such debates drew on decades of idealized visions and often disappointing realities of neighboring, embedded in narratives about race, gender, and community. From the 1940s to the 1980s, neighbors in Britain – particularly women and people of color – were governed by constantly shifting expectations and contradictory ideals. As local authorities increasingly pressed neighbors to serve as caregivers , racist tensions between neighbors erupted. I focus on a series of cases of racist violence between neighbors to consider how the state both needed and negated neighboring.