Residents’ Responses to ‘Territorial Stigmatization’: Visual Research in Berlin

Abstract

This article deals with the symbolic dimension of the transformation process in a post‐socialist large‐scale housing estate in Berlin after reunification. This reflection is based on the concept of ‘territorial stigmatization’ and I use a photographic method to analyse the representational strategies employed by residents to manage territorial stigma: identifying with depoliticized images of the past, exiting the estate and questioning the very principle of representation. The first two strategies seem to be different ways of internalizing dominant representations of place. The latter differs from the first two in its use of iconic means to challenge the current spatial order and its opening up of possibilities for emancipation. The article thus also shows how photography as a research method can reflect on existing power relations.

Territory and territorial stigmatisation: On the production, consequences and contestation of spatial disrepute

“…Concepts like 'neighbourhood effects' (e.g. Bauder, 2002;Overman, 2002;critiqued by Slater, 2013), and discourses on 'concentrated disadvantage' and 'social mix' (Darcy, 2007(Darcy, , 2010Steinberg, 2009), have represented estates as causes of disadvantage -causes of pathological 'cultures', including fecklessness and crime -or social isolation (Arthurson and Jacobs, 2009;Crookes, 2017;Cuny, 2018;Devereux et al, 2011Devereux et al, , 2012Hancock and Mooney, 2013;Jacobs and Flanagan, 2013;Kallin and Slater, 2014;Kearns et al, 2013;Slater, 2018). These representations have been central to the production of territorial stigma; as Wacquant (2008: 8) remarks, 'under cover of describing marginality [they] contribute to moulding it by organizing its collective perception and political treatment'.…”

“…Wacquant (2007Wacquant ( , 2008 observed various strategies of disidentification, among which 'lateral denigration' and 'mutual distancing' are particularly notable. In deploying these coping strategies, residents deny their belonging to a stigmatised territory and divert stigmatisation away from themselves and onto a 'faceless, demonized other' (Wacquant, 2007: 68; see also Contreras, 2016;Cuny, 2018;Eksner, 2013;Palmer et al, 2004;Verdouw and Flanagan, 2019). Furthermore, territorial stigmatisation can impel inhabitants to reduce their political demands (Ruggiero, 2007).…”

“…In another example, Cuny (2018) collaborated with residents of the Marzahn estate in Berlin to construct photographic portraits that gave counter-stigmatising 'insider views ', 'deactivat[ing] the visual clichés usually associated with [Marzahn]' by presenting the viewer with an image that stimulated them to envisage living within it (2018: 24). Cuny worked with residents to stage a portrait that reflected each participant's view of the estate and their place within it, and while the project revealed some 'submissive strategies of internalizing stigma', it also invoked 'counterstigmatising images' and 'insider views' that reversed stigma by critiquing the 'outside' (Cuny, 2018; see also Kirkness, 2014). An image of a woman at her kitchen window, through which the estate appears only as an apparition, and an image of a man seated outdoors, with only a sliver of the estate visible in the background, refuse typical visual representations of Marzahn and instead represent the territory lived in by residents, bringing the realities of everyday life in Marzahn into sharper relief (Bourdieu, 1989).…”

#WeAreBeneficiaries: Contesting Poverty Stigma Through Social Media

“…While not figuring prominently within Wacquant’s initial work, subsequent analyses have drawn attention to contestation and resistance through counter‐discourses and spatial interventions (e.g. Cuny ; Garbin and Millington ; Horgan ; Kirkness ; Kirkness and Tije‐Dra ; Maestri ; Quieros and Pereira ; Rogers et al ). Multiple accounts have described how resistance and contestation were fostered by residents’ shared sense of ownership, belonging, and attachment to place.…”

Lurking in the bushes: informality, illicit activity and transitional green space in Berlin and Detroit

“…One striking example may be found in the work of Cuny, who documents the ways that residents of the East Berlin neighborhood of Marzahn contend with the 'territorial stigmatization' of their area of residence, which is dominated by Socialist-era housing estates, through the planning of photographic self-portraits. 60 Most of them chose to pose out of doors, and one man in particular wanted to photographed in a 'landscaped wasteland' where he goes to photograph animals and be close to nature: 'By directing the viewer's gaze in the opposite direction, away from the estate and towards a wasteland that is still open to possibilities, he produces an image of "nature" that is the reverse image of the "ghetto" he refers to in the interview'. 61 In this way, the relatively uncontrolled space of the wasteland/natural area provides a place of freedom, or release from socially imposed limitations.…”