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Sustaining a spinal cord injury (SCI) at any point in time is life-altering – physically, emotionally, and financially – for all persons affected by the injury, but it can place unique challenges on younger married couples. This study examines the transition to injury for 18 couples (ages 21–55). Data were collected using individual interviews with each partner at three time points following injury and observation in the rehabilitation setting (Creekview). This resulted in 96 individual interviews and 300 hours of observation. Using the life course perspective as a guiding theoretical framework and thematic analysis, I examined how the healthcare institution influenced the couples' relationship during their rehabilitation stay and the subsequent transition home. Creekview staff and couples accepted and reinforced the dominant cultural narrative that women are natural caregivers, but larger social structures of class, gender, and the division of paid and unpaid labor worked together to push some women into caregiving faster or prevented other women from engaging in caregiving. This study examines how younger couples move through the caregiving career during an off-time transition when the expected outcome is not long-term care placement or death. This study identified three main types of caregivers, each with their own path of caregiving – naturalized, constrained, and resistant caregivers. Overall, the transition to injury is complex and this study highlights some of the ways the marital relationship is affected by a nonnormative, unexpected transition.

This article explores the cultural politics of civic pride through Hull's year as UK City of Culture (UKCoC) in 2017. It unpicks some of the socio-political meanings and values of civic pride in Hull and critiques the ways in which pride, as an indicator of identity and belonging, was mobilised by UKCoC organisers, funders and city leaders. It argues for more nuanced and critical approaches to the consideration and evaluation of pride through cultural mega events (CMEs) that can take account of pride's multiple forms, meanings and temporalities.

A multidimensional, mixed methods approach is taken, incorporating the critical analysis of Hull2017 promotional materials and events and original interviews with a range of stakeholders.

The desire for socio-economic change and renewed identity has dominated Hull's post-industrial sense of self and is often expressed through the language of pride. This article argues that UKCoC organisers, cognisant of this, crafted and tightly controlled a singular pride narrative to create the feeling of change and legitimise the entrepreneurial re-branding of the city. At the same time, UKCoC organisers overlooked the opportunity to engage with and potentially reactivate the political culture of Hull, which like other “left behind” or “structurally disadvantaged” places, is becoming increasingly anti-political.

Through the case study of a relatively unresearched and under-represented city, this paper contributes to cultural policy literatures concerned with critically assessing the benefits and shortcomings of Cultural Mega Events and to a more specific field concerning Cities of Culture and the political cultures of their host cities. This paper also contributes to an emerging literature on the centrality of pride through the UK's post-Brexit Levelling Up agenda, suggesting that pride in place is becoming figured as a “universal theme” of the neoliberal city script.