Cities, Societies and Migrants Social Spaces in the City: Community, Identity and Difference

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Cities, Societies and MigrantsSocial Spaces in
the City Community, Identity and Difference
Constructing social difference Dr Deborah
Phillips
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Lecture aims

• To explore
• how social identities and divisions are produced
• how some groups become powerful and others
  marginalised
• how geography is implicated in this

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Social categories and identities

• Social categories and identities are socially and
  historically constructed, so they are fluid and
  changing
• Identities are relational
• People have multiple, intersecting identities
• Identity is related to social divisions, social
  inequalities, and power to exert control over
  ones life e.g.
• through access to resources..
• access to urban spaces freedom to use public
  spaces without fear or restriction
• ability to exert influence
• This gives rise to social stratification.

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Power and ideologies

• perceptions of normality, deviance and
  marginality shape advantage and disadvantage,
  inclusion and exclusion
• dominant values become embedded in spaces and are
  taken-for-granted, e.g.
• masculine values (Linda McDowell)
• heterosexuality (Gill Valentine)
• able bodied (Rob Imrie)
• differences and divisions are socially
  constructed

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Constructing gendered identities

• Sex is biologically determined, but gender is
  socially constructed
• Judith Butler (1990) argues that gender
  identities are learned and performed
• But there is space for resistance

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Gendered roles 1950s
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Concepts of identity

• Personal identities perceptions of self -
  constructed in relation to how similar or
  different you feel in relation to other people
• Ascribed identities - how other people see us and
  categorise us. Often essentialised (stereotyped)
  identities, e.g.
• students, youth, racialised identities,
  religious identities, gender.

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Concept of the other

• tendency to avoid or distance ourselves from
  others
• Cf Edward Said (1978) on Orientalism
• the other is seen as
• exotic, fascinating, and
• alien and threatening
• to be feared and controlled, avoided
• process of keeping others at a distance
  involves the purification of space (Sibley
  1995)

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Defended spaces city living
Johannesburg
London
Florida
Sao Paulo
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Constructing social categories and identities -
racialisation

• race/ethnic categories appear objective, but
  categorisation is a subjective process
• USA census (Murji 2002)
• formal, authorised view of ascribed identities
• shift in categorisation, and thus ascription of
  identity, over time
• process of categorisation is imbued with power
• obsession with degrees of blackness
• white category largely undifferentiated defined
  as normal
• Whites appear invisible cf. Haraway (1992)
  Bonnett (2000)

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Scientific Theories of Race

• Georges Cuvier and de Gobineau suggested a
  hierarchy of races
• Whites Mongolians Negroid/Blacks
• Nott Gliddon used misleading imagery to reveal
  a natural hierarchy of races, suggesting that
  "Negroes" had been created to rank between
  "Greeks" (whites) and chimpanzees

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Extract from the Gentlemens Magazine, 1788

• The Negro is possessed of passions not only
  strong but ungovernable a mind dauntless,
  warlike and unmerciful a temper extremely
  irascible a disposition indolent, selfish and
  deceitful. He is at best a terrible husband, a
  harsh father and a precarious friend
• As for all other fine feelings of the soul, the
  Negro, as far as I have been able to perceive, is
  deprived of them all.

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Bartholomews School Economic Atlas, published in
1921

• Text accompanying a map of The Races of
  Mankind..
• in the case of the Negro, climatic influences
  lead to the early closing of the seams between
  the bones of the skull and thus the development
  of the brain is arrested and the adult is
  essential unintellectual. On the other hand, he
  is naturally acclimatised against numerous
  diseases and other conditions of life and work
  which are very adverse to the white man.
• He is therefore of great use as a manual
  labourer in a steamy climate (e.g. sugar cane
  plantations)

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Resistance and transgression

• Gay communities have used the streets to
  proclaim their identity and to make their voice
  heard
• gay men and women insert themselves into a
  heterosexist space (Valentine, 2001

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Resistance and transgression

• Ethnic carnivals provide excluded black
  minorities with a social and physical space to
  display their cultural difference and identity
• celebratory and political
• held in the symbolic space of the ethnic
  neighbourhood

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Resistance and transgression

• Youth has become a demonised category
• teenagers contest adult authority by finding
  their own spaces
• unruly, uncivilized behaviour
• directly aimed at adults e.g. graffiti, abuse,
  petty vandalism
• unintentionally disruptive, e.g. underage
  drinking, large groups can be seen as
  intimidating

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Conclusion

• social identities are multiple, relational and
  contested and have spatial expression
• social spaces reflect and reproduce social
  identities
• people may resist their ascribed identities and
  the spaces assigned to them space thus becomes
  part of a political process.