ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the multi-layered and conflicting narratives of Manchester that will resonate with post-industrial cities elsewhere. The author offers a sense of place by exposing how meanings, particularly those given to difference, vary and are employed in multiply inflected ways across the city. Manchester is introduced as a medium through which to consider the emergence of social identities, relations and organisation and as a site through which to explore how people do and make sense of their everyday lives. The author analyses how the neoliberal machinations of a city can allow for diversity to be imagined as simple plurality and as harmonious and celebratory, whilst the inner city is left as the signifier of difference and racialization. The chapter analyses the relationship between these two divergent views of a city, as well as how they are shaped by their national and global connections.
