Cultures, Ghettos and Camps: Sites of Exception and Antagonism in the City

Abstract

This paper explores the idea that some urban areas in the UK are crystallising around new poles of racial and religious segregation, manifested in ghettos and secessionary spaces. The paper suggests the need to rethink the theoretical conceptualisation of the links between ethnicity, culture, housing processes and dynamics of urban segregation. It argues that the work of Bourdieu, Elias and Weber provides a historically-grounded framework for exploring culture, conduct and residence and illustrates this by sketching the relationship between religion and housing. The paper then explores the paradigms of ghettos and secessionary urban spaces and applies Diken's and Alsayyad & Roy's conceptualisations of the camp as a site of exception to critique the notion of the non-antagonistic city and to suggest that the aim of urban policy should be the facilitation of civility between diverse populations rather than an overly ambitious, ahistorical and assimilationist project of ‘community’ cohesion.

Keywords:

• Race
• religion
• cohesion
• neighbourhoods
• social theory
• housing policy

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Ryan Powell and four anonymous referees for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper.