Coloniality and the political economy of gender: Edgework in Juárez City

The manner in which urban locations are drawn into the global economy defines their spatial organisation, distribution and utilisation. The relationships that are generated by this process include economic exchanges, racialised dynamics between workers and owners, gendered divisions of labour and the use and abuse of natural resources and infrastructure. These encounters of globalisation are often unequal or awkward and mediated by varying forms of violence, from structural to interpersonal, as these are used to rebalance the terms on which they meet. Using coloniality as an analytical tool, this article discusses the delicate balance of these Western-led encounters. Globalisation has become colonial by embedding hierarchical relationships in the foundations of the modern political economy. Gender identities, whiteness and non-whiteness, developed and underdeveloped are continually redefined, stigmatising certain groups and locations while elevating others on the basis of colonial power dynamics. Through a case study of the US–Mexico border city of Juárez, this article examines ethnographic work in its global context to explore how shame has become attached to male identities in locations of urban marginality. Theorising around the coloniality of urban space production, I discuss how Juárez’s border location has shaped its development though gendered and racialised frictions that are kept in check with violence. A coloniality perspective enables the unpicking of dominant conceptions of industrial cities in the Global South as metonyms for underdevelopment. Using the concept of edgework, I draw out how violence oils the wheels of globalisation to renegotiate damaged identities in contexts of territorial stigma.

Conclusion

The concluding chapter summarises the key findings and suggests policy recommendations. Part I delineated the pernicious impacts of neoliberalism and austerity on public/social housing in London, and analysed the role that estate demolition has played. Part II cast a sociological gaze not only at how working-class housing, lives and spaces are materially deprived and symbolically devalued by powerful external forces (neoliberalism and austerity), but also at how such housing, lives and spaces become valued and valuable. This emphasis on positive values corrects those policy perspectives that view estates through the epistemologically narrow lens of quantitative area-based deprivation indices. In comparative urbanism terms, London social housing estates remain substantially different from the anomic, often dangerous spaces of urban marginality such as US public housing projects (Wacquant). Part III focused on residents’ experiences of living through regeneration. It demonstrated how the valuation/devaluation duality tilts around in terms of place belonging. Comprehensive redevelopment diminishes the valued aspects of estates, while the devalued aspects are heightened and eventually dominate. The book provides several policy recommendations and research agendas. Demolition-based regeneration schemes inevitably result in state-led gentrification, but refurbishment-only schemes have the potential to improve estates and residents’ lives.

Participating in social exclusion: A reflexive account of collaborative research and researcher identities in the field

This paper offers a critical reflexive perspective on a Participatory Action Research project with young people at a site of ‘advanced urban marginality’ ( Wacquant, 2008 ). Its purpose is to explore the ways in which habitus based inequalities in the research field ( Bourdieu, 1977 ) contributed to a parallel process of marginalisation and exclusion in the act of participating. More specifically, we examine how a particular professional academic research identity and taxonomy of participatory social research, animated by a benign intent, nonetheless exerted an ideological form of control over the enquiry, administering and recycling feelings of failure and marginalisation among participants - including the ‘professional’ researcher. To draw out the different ways this control took form, our analysis centres on a particular exchange within the group concerned with the distribution of a one-off financial stipend to participants. We endeavour to draw some conceptual insights in our exploration of this exchange, and in conclusion offer some ideas for a ‘good enough’ practice of action research undertaken in comparable socio-economic and psycho-cultural conditions.

“Smack in the Middle”: Urban Governance and the Spatialization of Overdose Epidemics

In recent years, cities in North America have declared public health emergencies in response to opioid–related overdoses and fatalities. Municipalities are reacting with various interventions and degrees of urgency, whereas harm reduction organizations coordinate the street–level fight against death. Though drug use has long been concentrated in urbanized and downtown areas, these neighborhoods are being addressed with new national attention. This article draws on qualitative interviews with participants in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) in Vancouver and the Tenderloin in San Francisco. I highlight two interconnected themes: (1) the legacy of distrust between municipal officials and drug users and (2) the disconnection between “epidemics” as narrowly constructed public health emergencies and the needs of communities. Findings show ongoing struggles with “progressive” urban agendas. San Francisco minimized fatalities thanks to the early introduction of unregulated naloxone; however, new anti–homelessness legislation and police–led initiatives continue to create social upheaval for drug users. In comparison, the rollout of Vancouver's naloxone program arrived 10 years too late. Organizations are attempting to amplify access to safe injection and overdose prevention sites in the DTES. Using interurban analysis, overdose epidemics can be conceptualized as sociospatial fields of power, providing greater insight into urban marginality and health inequalities.