City, incarceration, and violence: geography of Black survival for organizational studies

Abstract

This article proposes developments between socio-spatial formation as a manifestation of structural racism with mass incarceration and violence against the Black population in a geography of survival, which can bring contributions to the spatial turn in organizational studies. We start from a consideration of social space, city, and race, indicating that Black peoples’ right to inhabit and live in the city is strongly affected by structural racism. Therefore, the question isn’t “how is the structure of everyday life in the city?” but “how is it possible for Black people to live in the city?” The literature on race and city indicates soft areas, hard areas, and Black spaces. Mass incarceration and violence against Black people, also exposed in police approaches, dates back to the history of enslavement, a constituent element of cities, in the classification of corporeality, a limiting factor for the Black population to appropriate and participate in the city. Thus a spatial perspective of the racial relations in the city denotes how the urban space is produced today.