‘“The community spirit was a wonderful thing.” On nostalgia and the politics of belonging’

In this article I draw on oral history interviews about social life in a small town to explore the personal and social implications of nostalgia. Whereas some recent scholarship interprets narratives of lost community in the context of conflicting moral claims to place, I argue that the telling of such stories can be beneficial both for narrators and for communities. The evidence presented here suggests that stories about community decline are not only told by long-standing working-class residents and that, rather than dividing different groups who inhabit a particular place, such stories can provide common ground