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Territorial stigmatization in action

Authors

  • Loic Wacquant University of California
  • Tom Slater University of Edinburgh
  • Virgílio Borges Pereira University of Porto
Vol. 29 No. 82 (2014)

Abstract

This article presents the thematic issue of the Environment and Planning A journal, which builds on the analytic framework elaborated by Wacquant in Urban Outcasts (2008) and on the activities of the Leverhulme Network on Advanced Urban Marginality to synthesize and stimulate inquiries into the triadic nexus of symbolic space, social space, and physical space at the lower end of the urban spectrum. The concept of territorial stigmatization weds Goffman’s model of the management of "spoiled identity" with Bourdieu’s theory of "symbolic power" to capture how the blemish of place impacts the residents of disparaged districts, the surrounding denizens and commercial operators, street-level public bureaucracies, specialists in cultural production (such as journalists, scholars, and politicians), and state officials and policies. Spatial taint is a novel and distinctive phenomenon that crystallized at century’s end along with the dissolution of the neighborhoods of relegation emblematic of the Fordist-Keynesian phase of industrial capitalism. It differs from the traditional topography of disrepute in the industrial city in that it has become autonomized, nationalized and democratized, equated with social disintegration, racialized through selective accentuation, and it elicits revulsion often leading to punitive corrective measures. The sociosymbolic strategies fashioned by the residents of defamed quarters to cope with spatial denigration span a panoply ranging from submission to defiance, and their adoption depends on position and trajectory in social and physical space. Territorial stigmatization is not a static condition or a neutral process, but a consequential and injurious form of action through collective representation fastened on place. By probing how it operates in different urban settings and political formations, the contributors to the Environment and Planning A’s issue advance our empirical understanding of the role of symbolic structures in the production of inequality and marginality in the city. They also suggest the need for public policies designed to reduce, not only the burden of material deprivation, but also the press of symbolic domination in the metropolis.

Author Biographies

Loic Wacquant, University of California

Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Researcher at the Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique, Paris. A MacArthur Foundation Fellow and recipient of the 2008 Lewis Coser Award of the American Sociological Association, his research spans urban relegation, ethnoracial domination, the penal state, embodiment, and social theory and the politics of reason. His books have been translated in some 20 languages and include the trilogy Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality (2008), Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (2009), and Deadly Symbiosis: Race and the Rise of the Penal State (2014), as well as The Two Faces of the Ghetto (2014). For more information, see http://loicwacquant.net/

Tom Slater, University of Edinburgh

Reader in Urban Geography at the University of Edinburgh. He is interested in how the nexus of market and state policies produces and reinforces social inequalities in the city. He has written widely on gentrification (notably the co-authored book, Gentrification, 2008), neighbourhood effects, territorial stigmatization, and urban theory. His current research deals with how conservative think tanks legitimize the ongoing assault on the British welfare state. He is co-ordinator of the Leverhulme Trust International Network project on advanced marginality. For more information, see http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/tslater

Virgílio Borges Pereira, University of Porto

Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Porto, where he teaches in the Faculties of Humanities and of Architecture. His work mobilizes the theories and methods of Bourdieu to probe urban inequality, housing policy, and historical transformations of class and culture in the city and the countryside. His publications have appeared in Portuguese, Spanish, French and English and include Classes e culturas de classe das famílias Portuenses (2005), Pierre Bourdieu, a teoria da prática e a construção da sociologia em Portugal (co-edited with J.M. Pinto, 2007), and Ao Cair do Pano: sobre a formação do quotidiano (ed., 2012). For more information, see http://www.isociologia.pt/ investigacao.aspx?id=126

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How to Cite
Wacquant, L., Slater, T., & Pereira, V. B. (2014). Territorial stigmatization in action. Revista INVI, 29(82), 219–240. Retrieved from https://revistapolitica.uchile.cl/index.php/INVI/article/view/62651
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Revista INVI
Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo
Universidad de Chile
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