Abstract
Urban Studies has been publishing Critical Commentaries since 2008 as a distinct article format. They aim to provide a forum for urban scholars and researchers to address some of the ‘bigger questions’ surrounding cities and urban development through the development of critical argument and reflection rather than the primary research findings that underpin the typical journal article. They allow for the development of a reasoned and powerful point of view in a somewhat less formal style than normal articles. A number of critical commentaries have been published by Urban Studies in recent years, covering topics such as urban resilience, the sub-prime crisis, gentrification and ‘smart urbanism’.
Here, we present our first Critical Commentary Symposium, based on the incorporation of five short responses to the original critical commentary. This is designed to contribute to the underlying aim of generating more critical review and debate in Urban Studies, alongside the publication of empirical research findings. This Critical Commentary Symposium is organised around a critical commentary from Loïc Wacquant reflecting on the contribution of, and broader lessons from, his Urban Outcasts book, originally published in 2008. A second forthcoming symposium will focus on the concept of the post-political city.
Based on a decade of ethnographic research in the United States and Europe, Urban Outcasts is a seminal work in urban sociology, arguing that increased levels of urban marginality reflect processes of urban abandonment fostered by states and private capital since the 1960s. This symposium is designed to reflect on how Loïc Wacquant’s arguments and research methods have informed and shaped urban research on inequality and marginality in recent years. Its publication some eight years after the text was originally published helps to focus attention on its broader influence on the direction and practice of research in the field. This can be contrasted with the typical focus of book reviews (usually published in the two to three years following publication) on the strengths and weaknesses of the text itself.
This Critical Commentary Symposium includes an original commentary by Loïc Wacquant and five short responses. In his article, Wacquant identifies three main lines of argument from Urban Outcasts: emphasising the political roots of black marginality in the US through policies of urban abandonment; disputing the convergence thesis by reasserting the distinctiveness of European urban peripheries; and uncovering the emergence of a new regime of urban marginality from the early 1980s. In his response, Orlando Patterson highlights a neglect of the role of culture and history in Wacquant’s structurally-orientated account, arguing that this reflects a broader sociological trend in the US. Wacquant’s emphasis on the role of the state is the theme of Nicole Marwell’s contribution, which argues that the notion of a powerful centralised state has been increasingly supplanted by a focus on how multi-faceted forms of governance are reshaping urban marginality. For his part, Treols Schultz Larsen calls for Wacquant’s ethnographic craft to be rendered more explicit for the benefit of other urban researchers. From an Eastern European perspective, János Ladányi returns the focus to the active role of the state in producing marginality, relating this to policies of exclusion practiced against the Roma group in Hungary. Finally, Emma Shaw Crane argues that Wacquant’s relational, processual conception of state power serves to illuminate the complex relationships between state agencies and poor people’s movements, resonating with Marwell’s emphasis on the intricacies of urban governance.