RC21 CONFERENCE 2013
Resourceful cities
Berlin (Germany), 29-31 August 2013
Humboldt-University Berlin, Institute for Social Science, Dept. for Urban and Regional Sociology
Culture “or/and” poverty. New discourses of socio-spatial inequalities in European cities?
In the last decade, at least in Europe, we are witnessing a resurgence of a political discourse that relates the alleged “death of multiculturalism” and “failure of integration” to group-specific attributes, spatially represented by ‘parallel worlds’ or urban ghettoes. What becomes increasingly apparent in the political (re)framing of discourses regarding living together, especially regarding its spatial representation, is the (re)emergence of the ‘cultural’ reasoning. This reasoning obscures factors such as poverty, inequalities or implemented policies, often stigmatises groups and places and complements the growing popularity of the ‘undeserving’ inner-city poor doctrine. Since policies, practices and discourses are often intertwined, such argumentations have repercussions not only on particular individuals, groups and places, but also to urban and social policies and to the broader approaches of living together.
Conversely, debates about poverty, inequality and exclusion are also re-emerging in academia; discourses that try to unpack and ‘name’ processes of urban inequalities that cannot be described solely by poverty. Wacquant’s work illustrates the processes behind the formation of ghettoes and introduces the notion of advanced marginality (with its inherent territorial stigma) that is characteristic of neoliberal governmentality. A structural / institutional emphasis is also present in analyses concerning systemic transformations along a logic of expulsion, or in the growing significance of class (along with race or ethnicity) in analyses of urban poverty. Moreover, in the current context of increased inequalities and ‘insecurity’ ideas around redistribution, social and spatial justice and capabilities and rights are gaining prominence and try to (re)frame the debate of socio-spatial inequalities and living together in a political context that includes not only socio-cultural parameters but broader injustices.
In this session we would like to invite papers which will offer a comparative and critical analysis of:
- Public discourses, policies and practices which use a ‘cultural’ reasoning and are associated with neighbourhoods stigmatised as ‘parallel worlds’ or ‘ghettoes’ and the impact they have on people and places, on social interactions and on the city as a whole.
- Public discourses, policies and practices concerning inner-city poor and the impact they have on people and places and on the city as a whole.
- Analyses that employ a different analytical framework for understanding urban socio-spatial inequalities.
Session Organizers
Dr. Penny Koutrolikou, National Technical University of Athens (Greece), School of Architecture, T: +306946513772, E: pennykk@gmail.com
Dr. Sonia Arbaci, Pompeu Fabra University, Department of Political and Social Sciences, Barcelona, E: s.arbaci@ucl.ac.uk, sonia.arbaci@upf.edu
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