WELCOME TO CRUMPSALL: the undramatic nature of anthropology at home


Author's name (parents' draft): Terence Rajivan Edward (now Doctor)
Dialogue on names (fictional): "Now why do you want a name?" So that my works can be identified - that is one reason. "You need a number really."
Author's name (my first draft): 0161__Rajivan
Abstract. Crumpsall, Manchester, was yesterday subject to a terrorist attack. I was in Crumpsall, in a hospital for around 2 months, in 2023. It was not a continuous period. I escaped for a week. I walked around in Crumpsall when I was forced back by court order, visited shops, bought food from shops, and got my haircut. What I found is that quite a few shops in Crumpsall lack a technology I assumed they would have: one cannot pay by debit card. Cash only. I identify this assumption and some others, testing the idea that travel broadens the mind, or more academically that social anthropology challenges our assumptions, and inquiring into whether it does when less dramatically pursued at home.
Draft version: 2 (30 May 2026 minor edits; version 1 October 3rd 2025, quick draft)
Software used (freeware): Google docs, Google search
PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/396171990_WELCOME_TO_CRUMPSALL_the_undramatic_nature_of_anthropology_at_home


If putting the reference taxes your brain
Don't write a poetic response to Shania Twain;
They say pride come before a fall
And you don't want to fall into a shopping mall


1
        Travel, they say, broadens the mind. And social anthropologists value their discipline because it challenges assumptions. Now we imagine the anthropologist as a posh gentleman or gentlewoman travelling a great distance and studying an isolated people, reporting about their beliefs and customs, social structure and perhaps more. Or that is a popular enough image of this figure; but there is anthropology at home these days too. However, are one's assumptions challenged at home? I suppose they are, but it is usually not dramatic stuff: not a king leaves his kingdom and finds that another society has democracy, say, something he had never heard of and which challenges his assumption about how a society must be organized. I will work backwards from the present towards some time I spent in another part of the city of Manchester, though I went with no actual intention of doing anthropology.


 2
Last Wednesday evening, I left my Manchester apartment with a comedy routine I had written in a coat pocket: a string on one liners, brief jokes. I planned to perform some stand up comedy downtown. I was late by my standards. Sometimes I go to the central library before comedy and often do some shopping beforehand, at Tesco, or visit Marks & Spencer. I could not see the bus, so I kept walking closer to town: there would soon be another bus stand and then another bus stand and I hoped to take the bus at a later stand. After walking more than 20 minutes, getting very close to the Alan Turing Building of the University of Manchester (where the maths department is, not computer science), I began to contemplate the fact that no bus had come yet. I had passed three bus stands. Well, buses are famously not reliable: there is a saying, "You wait and wait for one bus and then suddenly two come along." I waited at a bus stand near the new engineering building. Is it the one named after Nancy Rothwell - still alive - or is it simply called engineering building A? I had an interview in engineering for an admin job and one member of the interview panel asked me how I am going to cope with the boring work. (Perhaps when I first switched to analytic philosophy, Timothy Williamson should have asked me this question.) I didn't get the job. I waited for about 5 minutes at the bus stand and decided to take it as a government hint that it is not a good idea to go downtown tonight and walked back. I have since devised the term: govhint.


I imagine a person in the psychiatry field asking, "Why do you take it as a hint? Do you think powerful agents are communicating to you? Are you paranoid?" Well, (a) hint-taking is usually a risky business by its nature - behold the scene from a Flora Nwapa novel set in Nigeria in which a woman's files are being stolen at work and when she changes how she does her work, the files stop being stolen; what would you think and do if you found them stolen? "I would complain that there is a thief"? "I would leave the job"? "When I go into a job, my people provide me with a thorough report of the work culture by experts and I let that guide me"? "It is another culture and this culture is simply different?" Maybe it is not possible to take some relevant hints without taking risks which are insensible to some people. And (b), my relation to the bus service is strange and probably different from what we officially think. I sent off an application for a free bus pass, following a period in hospital briefly described in the next section. It was at the encouragement of a psychiatrist and then a care coordinator, who took expert advice on how to do the application, from someone who had helped with many successful applications. I did not succeed, I was informed by post. But I have noticed on some occasions at least, if I don't specify the normal price of a ticket to the bus conductor (don't say "£2 please"!), merely present my card for an electronic deduction of money, I get charged 20 pence on my bank account statement. The care coordinator and maybe much of the National Health Service seem to have these assumptions:
* Either your application is successful or not successful. (Buses: no in-between result assumption)
* If the bus service tells you that the application is unsuccessful (by letter), it is unsuccessful. (Buses: reliable testimony assumption.)
* If your application is unsuccessful, you are legally obliged to pay the normal price. (Buses: legal obligation assumption)
* You cannot present your card for electronic payment and avoid paying the normal price. To avoid, you would have to sneak on the bus, if that is even possible these days. (Buses: unavoidable normal payment assumption)
The world I seem to live in is a bit distant from the expectations of an ordinary middle class or working class fellow, I suppose, certainly from my expectations in the previous decade. I have to spend a lot of time explaining, it seems, to the psychiatrist say. If your relation to the Manchester bus service were the same as mine, you might have the impression of more hints. (I say "I suppose" because of an animated cartoon scene, or set of scenes, available online in which the father of a family joins a secret society and gets numerous benefits: plumbers fix leaks, etc. Is there some realism in this scene? Here is a tip: if you are going to challenge widespread expectations after a psychiatric diagnosis, it is easier to refer to someone else than simply your own experience. You may need to be well-read as well. Where would I be without the Nwapa reference?) 


By the way, in a conversation with my Aunt, some months ago, she suggested pursuing the application with the council. In London, where she lives, the bus service and the council are clearly separate entities. She seemed to assume the same was true of Manchester. Manchester's bus service went public (within the last year): the Manchester Bee bus service, all yellow buses - all old buses repainted (and sometimes reminiscent of the yellow schoolbuses of North America)? But I should note that it costs me 2 pounds to get from where I am to town: a 40 minute walk. In the south of England, when I visit my mother, I travel from Milton Keynes on 1 hour 30 minutes journey for around 2 pounds.


So I took the hint. On the way back, I saw two Asian lads near a bus stand, under a university building, not Far East Asian it seemed. I asked them if they were waiting for the bus. They said it has not arrived in 40 minutes. I asked them if they were students. They denied this, but looked students to me. I asked if they wanted to hear a joke and duly told them one, an inaccurate one probably. "What is the difference between a joke and an academic paper? A joke has a scenario and then a little punchline. An academic paper has a little idea and then a long climax of elaboration." They enjoyed it.


The next day my Aunt called and told me if I had seen the news. I told her I had heard of Greta Thunberg's ill-judged entry into Israeli waters, to protest against the conflict in Gaza and bring aid. She was on or part of an aid flotilla with a number of others. That was not the news my Aunt had in mind. There had been a terrorist incident in Crumpsall at a synagogue, with two dead and three seriously injured. Crumpsall. I remember Crumpsall.


3
        In September 2023 - was it the 5th or the 6th? - I was behaving loudly on the street. The police surprisingly apprehended me - unlike with other loud folk. I was injected with a tranquilizer, and forced into Manchester Royal Infirmary with mental health problems: the outcome of writing too much or too much on esoteric matters perhaps. I was transported to North Manchester General Hospital in Crumpsall and put on an anti-psychotic described as mild. I was kept in a psychiatry ward. There was a basketball court outside I could go to. After about three weeks I was allowed out of the hospital grounds for 30 minutes, but when I left I hesitated somewhat and then escaped home, taking around 2 hours: Manchester is larger than I think. After about a week, I was forced back to North Manchester General by court order. In November, or perhaps just before, I was allowed out once again but required to return to the hospital, the amount of time out permitted gradually increasing. The assistant psychiatrist, as I called him, told me, "We must learn to trust you again!"


On my walks about, I saw more of Crumpsall. I saw a young woman by the railway. I thought to strike up a conversation but what to say in this context? I visited shops. I went to a biriyani shop, which also had samosas and I tried their samosas as well. They are much smaller than elsewhere in Manchester but tasty enough and the worker there warms them up herself, which felt homely. But I could not wait for them to cool. The biriyani deal is good, very good for the cost. But you have to pay by cash. I found that this was so in quite a few other shops too. I did not think of myself as an anthropologist, but this was an assumption of mine was challenged:
(Electronic card payment assumption ) If you go into a shop in a city, you can pay by card.
For years now, decades even, you can pay by card in many shops. A machine informs a bank computer account of how much money to deduct from your bank account for the items being purchased. No physical money is handed over. Since leaving the hospital, I sometimes ask a small business if they prefer cash.


4
        The biriyani shop was "up the road" - about 8 minutes from the hospital. There were two shops closer by: convenience stores. I would buy some wafers from one and they were replaced with Italian wafers. I looked through the other shop a couple of times and the owner seemed to grumble and I took that as a hint: if you come in here, buy something. That was another assumption of mine challenged.
(Window shopping permitted assumption) In urban UK you can go into a shop, examine the goods for sale and if you are not interested in any, you don't have to buy.
You don't have to but if you are at all receptive to others, you will become uncomfortable?


5
I got my face shaved using an electric razor by a black Salford University nurse in the Crumpsall-based hospital. He dropped the towel around my neck to the floor and then when it was put back, I complained and he told me not to complain about such little things. Anyway, I went through it surprisingly. After that, I shaved once a week using the provided razors. This was before I was allowed out, having been forced back by court order.


I got my hair cut at the local hairdresser when I was allowed out. The hospital has a Jewish history, which made me wonder about earlier struggles to get going in this country; the hairdresser was Muslim I believe. It was a good haircut and a number of fellow patients expressed their admiration. Several got their hair cut short.


6
After I was forced back, a new patient, a young white man, came in who scared me considerably when I met him, though he shook my hand gently; he always had two nurses "guarding" him. My sister began to visit me and took an immediate liking to him. Later I played basketball with him and it seems he found I was better than he thought I would be. I enjoyed playing basketball in high school and before; I would play in the morning against a schoolmate in my year, before classes began. If you play quite a bit in your childhood, you are rusty but not so bad, I suppose. This patient went around writing one positive thing about each patient and my positive thing was based on this experience.


References
Cartoon Guys. 2017. The Simpsons: Homer joins a Secret Society. Available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JokWbIEt3n8
Nwapa, F. 1992 (originally 1981). One is Enough. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press
Strathern, M. 1992. After Nature: English kinship in the late twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Refers to assumptions being challenged in the prologue.)