Klasa, etniczność i państwo w procesie tworzenia marginalności. Ponowne spojrzenie na obszary miejskiej relegacji
Class, ethnicity, and state in the making of marginality: Revisiting territories of urban relegation

Summary/Abstract: In the postindustrial city, relegation takes the form of real or imaginary consignment to distinctive sociospatial formations variously and vaguely referred to as “inner cities,” “ghettos,” “enclaves,” “no-go areas,” “problem districts,” or simply “rough neighborhoods.” How are we characterize and differentiate these spaces, what determines their trajectory (birth, growth, decay and death), whence comes the intense stigma attached to them, and what constellations of class, ethnicity and state do they both materialize and signify? These are the questions I pursued in my book Urban outcasts (2008) through a methodical comparison of the trajectories of the black American ghetto and the European working-class peripheries in the era of neoliberal ascendancy. In this article, I revisit this cross-continental sociology of “advanced marginality” to tease out its broader lessons for our understanding of the tangled nexus of symbolic, social and physical space in the polarizing metropolis at century’s threshold in particular, and for bringing the core principles of Bourdieu’s sociology to bear on comparative urban studies in general.

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