Programme full

Wednesday 15 April 2015 at 16:00 - 17:30
PAPER SESSION 3
Cities, Mobilities, Place and Space
M532, GEORGE MOORE BUILDING
Urban Warriors: The Role of the Street in Gang Regeneration in Glasgow
Miller, J.
(University of the West of Scotland)
By utilising the street as a lens in which gang life is lived out we have a greater depth of knowledge on the processes
that allow gangs in Glasgow to regenerate. This paper presents findings from a three year grounded theory study of
gangs in Glasgow. What emerged from the research was a representation of street and gang life and an insight into
the members that operate within it. In utilising the street as the stage in which these realities were played out this
paper will outline the processes that were involved in moving in and out of street and gang life. By drawing upon
theories such as Vigil's multiple marginalities and street realities a picture emerges that allows the complex hues and
depth of gang life to emerge within multiple social realities. Focus has been too situated upon the gang and gang
culture and this is limiting our understanding of gangs within the UK. This research seeks to redress this by putting
forward a representation of gang life in Glasgow where the street is the central stage in which the participant's gang
lives are played out. This allows a greater range of social realities to be teased out as the gang is not saturated by
itself but is part of a much larger, more complex street society and to begin to understand it we must first begin to
understand the street culture it is situated within.
Moral Pollution in the Public Realm: Strangers and Incivilities in Everyday Urban Life
Horgan, M.
(University of Guelph)
Civility has long been of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, economists, and historians, and, more recently,
legislators and policy makers. Despite the range of disciplines and political actors that swarm around this nebulous
concept, there is little consensus on what it is, who has it, how to cultivate it, and what happens without it. If civility
raises all of these questions, incivility raises many more. Rather than treating uncivil acts as symptoms of social
fragmentation—the interactional equivalent of 'broken windows'—I follow recent research into incivilities that treat rude
encounters as part of everyday life. Extending this research I look at various ways that people living in cities interpret
rude encounters with strangers in their everyday lives. This paper draws on data from a growing bank of interviews
and focus groups where participants provide narrative accounts of rude encounters with strangers in public space
collected as part of the Researching Incivilities in Everyday Life (RIEL) Project. Participants' accounts of specific
encounters are ostensibly concerned with particular infractions, but I show how these narratives draw upon broader
cultural structures, by wedging open moral claims around the character of the perpetrator, the nature of social order,
and unleashing talk of moral degeneration and the decline of civil society and the public realm.
Everyday Territories: Outreach Work, Homelessness and the Rhythms of City Space
Smith, R., Hall, T.
(Cardiff University)
This paper is about everyday relations of territory, need and care in central city space. Here we aim to describe some
of the challenges posed by the rhythms and materiality of the city to two groups of people for whom territory, need and
care intersect in significant ways: firstly, the homeless, some of whom, lacking a place of their own, rely on central city
space and streets as a last resort in which to make any sort of life; secondly, those whose job or inclination it is to
seek out and care for these often difficult and vulnerable individuals. Developing some of the insights of Erving
Goffman we consider the centrality of territories (and claims) to social relations and point to the ways in which (some)
city space (some of the time) is amenable or resistant to encounters and claims and need and care. In examining the
relations between and challenges faced by these two groups, in a single case study, we offer a counter to the idea of
the revanchist and exclusionary city and static, 'once and for all' accounts of urban territories.
115 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University