Geographies of domination and oppression

Hijab Hysteria

by maryam ismail

The National.ae

Can we ever get over hijab hysteria? I hope so. In this artilce I discuss the underhanded way in which the US... more Can we ever get over hijab hysteria? I hope so. In this artilce I discuss the underhanded way in which the US government is trying to control the Muslim woman's body.

La Meccanica Sociospaziale Della Dominazione

by Leonidas Cheliotis

A Review of the Indian Association of Women's Studies XIII National Conference; 'Resisting Marginalisations, Challenging Hegemonies; Revisioning Gender Politics'.

by China Mills

Psychology of Women Section Review, 2011, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 28-33.

'Territorial Stigma and the Politics of Resistance in a Parisian Banlieue: La Courneuve and Beyond' (published in Urban Studies)

by David GARBIN

(2011) In Urban Studies. Co-authored with Gareth Millington

full paper on request (d.garbin@surrey.ac.uk)

Drawing on research carried out in the Parisian banlieue of La Courneuve, this article contributes to the sociological... more Drawing on research carried out in the Parisian banlieue of La Courneuve, this article contributes to the sociological analysis of urban marginalisation in post-riot France. Beginning with a discussion of the broad relationship between society and space, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s relational understanding of social space and how these complexities are inscribed in the urban, it moves on to consider how this relates to Lefebvre’s production of space thesis. The main body of the article outlines some of the ways in which territorial stigmatisation is imposed and reproduced. Empirical material is treated here as ‘diagnostic’ of the symbolic domination that blights La Courneuve.
Yet this material is also illuminative of the irregular and scattered forms that resistance to territorial stigma takes. It is suggested that the complex relationship between social and physical space is expressed through the construction of symbolic geographies of domination/resistance and negotiated through intricate ‘entanglements of power’.


full paper on request (d.garbin@surrey.ac.uk)

Cheliotis, L. K. and S. Xenakis (2012, forthcoming) 'Matter out of Place: Immigration Detention in Greece', European Journal of Criminology 9(6).

by Leonidas Cheliotis

Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies. Political Geography. 30 (2), 90-98.

Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that... more Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is 'irrational' marks particular cultures as ‘other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to putatively ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.

Public Space as emancipation: meditations on anarchism, radical democracy, neoliberalism and violence

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Public Space as emancipation: meditations on anarchism, radical democracy, neoliberalism and violence. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography. 43 (2), 525-562.

In establishing an anarchic framework for understanding public space as a vision for radical democracy, this article... more In establishing an anarchic framework for understanding public space as a vision for radical democracy, this article proceeds as a theoretical inquiry into how an agonistic public space might become the basis of emancipation. Public space is presented as an opportunity to move beyond the technocratic elitism that often characterizes both civil societies and the neoliberal approach to development, and is further recognized as the battlefield on which the conflicting interests of the world's rich and poor are set. Contributing to the growing recognition that geographies of resistance are relational, where the “global” and the “local” are understood as co-constitutive, a radical democratic ideal grounded in material public space is presented as paramount to repealing archic power in general, and neoliberalism’s exclusionary logic in particular.

Cheliotis, L. K. (2010) ‘The Sociospatial Mechanics of Domination: Transcending the “Exclusion/Inclusion” Dualism’, Law & Critique 21(2): 131-145.

by Leonidas Cheliotis

This article takes issue with Zygmunt Bauman's thesis that physical exclusion depends on the hindrance of cognitive... more This article takes issue with Zygmunt Bauman's thesis that physical exclusion depends on the hindrance of cognitive associations, emotional quandaries, and moral inhibitions, hence victims and their lot remain out of sight. It is counterargued that conscious engagement in directly physical forms of exclusionary behaviour is possible insofar as victims are known in ways that provoke emotional disdain and moralise violence. Such knowledge consists in the relegation of others to the status of morally lesser human beings, and is produced via prior symbolic mediations. To the extent that mediations operate according to the power differentials they both reflect and help to sustain, there is a need to shift analytical attention from exclusion to the 'meta-category' of domination.

Cheliotis, L. K. and S. Xenakis (2010) ‘What’s Neoliberalism Got to Do With It? Towards a Political Economy of Punishment in Greece’, Criminology & Criminal Justice (special issue on ‘Neoliberalism and Penality: Reflections on the Work of Loïc Wacquant’, edited by L. K. Cheliotis) 10(4): 353-373.

by Leonidas Cheliotis

The aim of this article is to put Loïc Wacquant’s neoliberal penality thesis to the test within the Greek context.... more The aim of this article is to put Loïc Wacquant’s neoliberal penality thesis to the test within the Greek context. Although we discover ample compelling evidence of intense and growing punitiveness in contemporary Greece, it turns out that punitive trends anticipated the recent advent of neoliberal policy-making in the country, and indeed have starker precedents throughout the twentieth century. Whilst the former leaves neoliberalism with a limited penal role at most -that of enhancing, as opposed to engendering, the revitalised expansion of imprisonment-, the latter draws attention to the forms and functions of state power characteristic of the capitalist semi-periphery. That neoliberalism bears little pertinence to the Greek case becomes all the more evident when we shift the focus of attention from the penal realm to the history of welfare and economic regulation in the country. True to its semi-peripheral status, Greece has long known both insufficient provision of social welfare -even if related expenditure has undergone an overall upward trend over the last fifty years- and widespread informal flexibility in labour relations. Although neoliberal reforms have been introduced at the policy-making level more recently, they have remained partial in scope, and have been implemented slowly and patchily. In all, then, whilst we support Wacquant’s call for ‘bringing developments in welfare and criminal justice into a single theoretical framework equally attentive to the instrumental and expressive moments of public policy’ (Wacquant, 2009a: 175), we find neoliberalism wanting as an explanation of punitiveness in Greece today. Instead, and to the extent that space allows, we point to the configuration of social, political, and economic tensions and conflicts representative of semi-peripheral societies. Sharing Wacquant’s concern for ‘epistemic reflexivity’, we conclude with some thoughts on the political dangers of the neoliberal penality thesis.