Local government and practice ontologies: agency, resistance and sector speaks in homelessness services

Present accounts of local government under neoliberalism risk poorly characterising and conceptualising forms of resistance by local actors. Institutional actors, and statutory agents in particular, have long been subject to analyses in order to appraise their complicity with, and resistance to oppressive political rationalities. Debates have gathered pace under ‘austerity’ and swingeing fiscal cuts to local budgets. The article argues that at the heart of existing accounts is the failure to engage with how institutional structures come to formation and how human agents come to action. Informed by relational and ontological approaches to the ‘making-of’ state formations, the ‘sector speaks’ concept is introduced. The concept draws on local actors’ narratives from an empirical study of homelessness practices, demonstrating these as a governance-action interface, ‘lived’ through day-to-day actions and social practices. This approach provides alternative insight into human agency and resistance, and how these may be captured through local government research.