Lecture 5: Geographies of Difference and Segregation I: Crisis Communality and 'Other' Communities

Question 1

Antagonism was rife across the UK

Give examples from the past

Answer 1

Many workers who came from British colonies faced discrimination

1958 race riots in Nottingham and London
1960s and early 70s - many instances of racism in the unions — discrimination against black workers and even racist strikes in UK.

Question 2

Crisis Communality

Answer 2

Refers to instances where people feel and express concern with order, conformity and social homogeneity (Knox and Pinch, 2010: 191).

• Often involves cultural identity politics.
• Mediated by power relationships: – Issues of dominance and oppression
• Exclusion of groups who transgress (or are expected to transgress - Cresswell).

Question 3

NIMBY-ism

Answer 3

Physical and social threats become symbols of a common purpose and of community identity

Question 4

Territorial exclusivity

Answer 4

Spatial boundaries are in part moral boundaries (Sibley p. 39).

Question 5

Coding of space =

Answer 5

People made to feel that they ‘transgress’ boundaries.

Question 6

‘Othering’

Answer 6

– the process of perceiving or portraying someone or something as intrinsically different or alien.
– binary of self and other (“not one of us”)
– class, ethnicity, disability, religion

Question 7

Jim Crow Laws

Answer 7

The segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation.

Question 8

Gated Communities

Answer 8

• Fear over threat to property values
• Homeowners Associations & ‘Privatopias’
E.g. Neighbourhood Watch

Question 9

Unlike many of global capitals London’s …

Answer 9

rich and poor are distributed in a way that makes the city resemble a patchwork quilt.

However, increasingly, polarisation of the rich and poor has started to accelerate

Question 10

Gated Communities – Fortress US?

Building Safer Communities or Social Division?

Answer 10

• Offer a false sense of security
• Can become a target
• Can create community hostility – ‘ghettos of affluence’
• More about prestige and aspiration than fear of crime?
• Could undermine public services
• Can cause ghettos outside

Question 11

Iris Marion Young (1990) criticises the concept of community for three main reasons:

Answer 11

1. It privileges unity over difference
2. It generates exclusion
3. It is an unrealistic vision
   (cited in Valentine, Social Geographies reading)

Question 12

Spatial practises are…

Answer 12

the acts, routines, rituals, actions, movements, and uses (of space) that are carried out by people (often in their daily lives).
They occur in place and shape (real and perceptions of) place. The meaning of the practises (e.g. loitering, building a wall) are derived from being spatialised.
Would be considered loitering teenagers outside a shop but not considered waiting in the cinema.

Question 13

Tim Cresswell- Looking at the coding of space

Answer 13

Black men being in a space they ‘did not belong’- brutality followed…