A Spectral Spectacle

After Amsterdam’s late medieval Catholic monasteries were surrendered to the Protestant government in 1578, four of these properties were converted into an orphanage, mental asylum, and gender-specific reformatories respectively before the turn of the century. Portals with Dutch Mannerist expressions were installed at the principal entrances as a publicly visible feature of modernisation for the repurposed complexes. This essay is a study of these architectural objects and their socio-political value for the city’s philanthropic campaign that affirmed middle-class power. It argues that the portals, completed with narrative relief panels and didactic inscriptions, were a means for Amsterdam’s authorities to redefine the spectacle of social marginality. Once a concrete sight of panhandlers and vagrants occupying the urban landscape, to the general population underclass visibility became an abstract image of civic discipline. Such an image enabled sequestered and disappeared lives to reappear, with a spectral quality integral to Foucault’s analysis of modern society’s compulsion to stow away indigent bodies. Considering the seventeenth-century Dutch moral geography of moderating wealth through philanthropy, such a ‘spectral spectacle’ paralleled the Baroque theatricality of Counter-Reformation Rome as a spatial experience that advanced a more secular mode of devotion to the community.

The Experience of Safety, Harassment and Social Exclusion Among Male Clients of Sydney’s Medically Supervised Injecting Centre

Research on drug harm reduction services has found these operate as a safe haven from health harm. Less is known about the wider sense of security experienced by clients of such services as a counterbalance to social marginality in their daily lives. As part of a larger study of the experience of violence among Australian men, the authors completed 20 qualitative semi-structured interviews with male clients of Sydney’s Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) in 2016–2020. These were conducted anonymously in a private clinical room inside the MSIC and focused on aspects of drug use and general life experiences of violence, law enforcement, safety and security. Interviews were analysed by thematic content through a combination of preliminary and second close readings. Our analysis found that the MSIC consistently acted as a reprieve from harassment and violence from police and members of the public, conflict in drug deals, and general social exclusion.

When School Comes to Community: Considering the Socioethnic Environment in Educational Reform for Gypsy Populations in a French City

In this paper, I explore the dynamics of an educational reform aimed at transforming individual and collective attitudes towards school among Gypsy/Roma families living in urban spaces of advanced social marginality. In Perpignan, Gypsy/Roma people are highly marginalized, living in a deprived urban environment (violence, unemployment, poor housing conditions, female-headed households, problematic night life) and following their cultural and customary rules and values. These play a crucial role in weak school performance. In 2005, city riots pushed municipal, community, and educational stakeholders to act. Policymakers implemented an experimental national policy in Perpignan from 2007 to 2015, in which they treated education as the cornerstone of necessary change. This public policy opened schools to their social and ethnic environment, as socioenvironmental settings were utilized as a performative tool for school achievement and success.

Political Trust in the “Places That Don't Matter”

A popular explanation for the recent success of right-wing populist candidates, parties and movements is that this is the “revenge of the places that don't matter”. Under this meso-level account, as economic development focuses on increasingly prosperous cities, voters in less dynamic and rural areas feel neglected by the political establishment, and back radical change. However, this premise is typically tested through the analysis of voting behavior rather than directly through citizens' feelings of political trust, and non-economic sources of grievance are not explored. We develop place-oriented measures of trust, perceived social marginality and perceived economic deprivation. We show that deprived and rural areas of Britain indeed lack trust in government. However, the accompanying sense of grievance for each type of area is different. Modeling these as separate outcomes, our analysis suggests that outside of cities, people lack trust because they feel socially marginal, whereas people in deprived areas lack trust owing to a combination of perceived economic deprivation and perceived social marginality. Our results speak to the need to recognize diversity among the “places that don't matter,” and that people in these areas may reach a similar outlook on politics for different reasons.

Inequalities and Resistances in The Organization of Marginalized Festive Practices

This article is based on the understanding of festivals as organizations and events that are multiform and establish mediations with society (Amaral, 1998a; Davel, 2016). Based on a multi-political perspective, our objective was to reflect on the social production of inequalities and forms of resistance in the organization of the congo capixaba festival, in the state of Espírito Santo. Our theoretical reflections were grounded in Certeau’s (Certeau, 1985, 2008, 2012; Certeau, Giard, & Mayol, 2003), Hall’s (2003, 2011) and Sansone’s (2004) discussions and reflections regarding contemporary black culture. Our empirical field of investigation was the Carnaval de Congo de Máscaras [Congo Masquerade Carnival], in Roda D’água, where we employed the ethnographic method as a data production and interpretation strategy. Our findings indicate the existence of “non-places” as products of historically produced conditions of social marginality, as well as an ethnic-racial invisibility reinforced in the festival’s organizational context. These non-places operate in the religious, touristic, and cultural macropolitical fields. On the other hand, we highlight how the subjects of such conditions deal with them by employing certain micropolitical tactics, which figure prominently in their everyday lives, and articulate themselves around a sense of tradition and belonging.

Desigualdades e Resistências no Organizar de Práticas Festivas Marginalizadas

This article is based on the understanding of festivals as organizations and events that are multiform and establish mediations with society (Amaral, 1998a; Davel, 2016). Based on a multi-political perspective, our objective was to reflect on the social production of inequalities and forms of resistance in the organization of the congo capixaba festival, in the state of Espírito Santo. Our theoretical reflections were grounded in Certeau’s (Certeau, 1985, 2008, 2012; Certeau, Giard, & Mayol, 2003), Hall’s (2003, 2011) and Sansone’s (2004) discussions and reflections regarding contemporary black culture. Our empirical field of investigation was the Carnaval de Congo de Máscaras [Congo Masquerade Carnival], in Roda D’água, where we employed the ethnographic method as a data production and interpretation strategy. Our findings indicate the existence of “non-places” as products of historically produced conditions of social marginality, as well as an ethnic-racial invisibility reinforced in the festival’s organizational context. These non-places operate in the religious, touristic, and cultural macropolitical fields. On the other hand, we highlight how the subjects of such conditions deal with them by employing certain micropolitical tactics, which figure prominently in their everyday lives, and articulate themselves around a sense of tradition and belonging.

Why Precarious Work Is Bad for Health: Social Marginality as Key Mechanisms in a Multi-National Context

The expansion of precarious work in recent decades has motivated a large body of research on its implications for health. While considerable work has focused on whether precarious work undermines health, much less is known about why it matters. To fill this gap, this paper offers and tests a conceptual model whereby the effects of precarious work on health are mediated by social marginality, specifically reduced self-efficacy, weaker social integration, and lower social capital. All three mechanisms are understood as both social consequences of precarious work and important determinants of health. Empirically, we use data from the European Social Survey and investigate (1) conditional direct effects of precarious work on self-rated health and (2) extent of mediation via the three mechanisms. Furthermore, we assess the generalizability of the model across five welfare state regimes that prior work has deemed to be important moderators of the health–precarious work relationship. Results indicate precarious work has significant conditional direct effects and indirect effects through all three mediators that significantly reduce effect of precarious work on health. This is robust in the general sample and for four of five welfare state regimes. These findings highlight a previously unexplored vector connecting precarious work to health and indicate that the effects of precarious work on perceptions of self and social relations is a key link to poorer health. The study also expands conceptualization of the broad role of socioeconomic status for health inequalities and furthers understanding of the mechanisms at work.