CALL FOR PAPERS: RGS-IBG INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, LONDON, AUGUST 26-29 2014
* Territorial stigmatisation and place attachment - Expressions of
attachment to stigmatised places and the contestation of place based
stigma *
Session convenors: Andreas Tijé-Dra and Paul Kirkness.
Territorial stigmatisation has become a popular topic for urban
researchers, in part because of recent episodes of urban unrest and
due to the consequences of the increased neoliberalisation that
affects cities throughout the world. This interest means that the
malignant consequences of marginalisation and stigmatisation are well
known. It is recognised that the ways in which specific places are
portrayed is critically important for discussions about their future.
The negative representation of cities or specific neighbourhoods
within metropolitan areas has profound and long lasting structural and
material effects that trickle down to the residents in these spaces.
Generalised state disinvestment in areas that come to be known as
segregated no-go zones reinforces neighbourhood discrimination. In
turn, this leads to a corresponding and well documented rise in
prejudice against residents and urban communities that are
'contaminated' by stigma. There are of course many more consequences,
such as the negative impact on the sense of belonging to the
neighbourhood and on the capacity for collective action of urban
dwellers at the margins of urban society. The consequences of urban
marginality appear to be overwhelming and it is readily assumed that
residents of stigmatised quarters must necessarily hope for an exit
from the blemished place in which they live, if and when they acquire
the cultural or economic capital to do so.
Although such conceptualisations are right to point to the devastating
inequality that is reproduced through territorial stigmatisation, they
tend to unintentionally re-iterate the stigma of place and to obscure
and determine the agency of residents. As a result, it is possible
that they participate in perpetuating the otherness of the places that
they examine. In this session, we want to re-open, expand and
challenge such visions of agency by exploring the strategies that some
inhabitants adopt to manage, cope with and attempt to deflect the
stigma of place. In what ways do these actors resist the positions
that they are assigned in society as a result of such reputations and
develop forms of attachment within these processes of positioning? We
notably wish to investigate and discuss
- the symbolic, practical and emotional contestations and coping
mechanisms that some residents articulate against the stigma connected
to specific neighbourhoods. We are also interested in those
non-residents (social workers, housing activists, etc.) who may also
be attempting to resist the effects of territorial stigmatisation;
- the multiple and varied forms of attachments that take root
within stigmatised urban quarters, resulting from individual or
collectively shared practices, representations and feelings that go
against general conceptualisations of territorial stigma as
incontestable;
- the (potential) correlation between the everyday act of
coping with the effects of territorial stigmatisation and the
place-attachment that residents express for neighbourhoods perceived
as profoundly tainted by those who do not live in these place. We
would of course like to investigate the significance of these
attachments for urban planning.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to Andreas
([log in to unmask]) and to Paul
([log in to unmask]) before the 18th of February. Feel free to
contact us if you have any questions.
Paul
--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
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