This book explores small town austere Britain. The text argues for a return to both dialectical thinking and politicized community research, in light of the current ‘austere’ landscape, in order to intellectually militate against centre-right think tanks. It also urges for a kind of epistemological anarchism, which refuses to view the small towns which are the subject of the book through existing ‘common sense’ paradigms, particularly those of state and capital, but also those of cosy localism.