Homeless Youth on the Road and
in the Streets
• The anthropology of deviance
• “sub-cultures”
• Urban anthropology
• The anthropology of space and place
The Anthropology of Deviance
Deviance
• Modes of action which do not conform to the
norms or values held by most of the members of
a group or society.
• What is regarded as 'deviant' is as widely
variable as the norms and values that
distinguish different cultures and subcultures
from one another.
• Many forms of behaviour which are highly
esteemed in one context, or by one group, are
regarded negatively by others.
Deviance and Conformity
• Social constructions
• idealized conduct is most clearly seen in
marginalized people
• deviance forces them into "discredited" or
"discreditable" groups, based on the
nature of their stigma
• deviance & the existence of a stigma
Stigma
• "mark of infamy or disgrace; sign of moral
blemish; stain or reproach caused by
dishonorable conduct; reproachful
characterization" (Webster, 1913)
• Social stigma
– social disapproval of personal characteristics
or beliefs that are against cultural norms
– social stigma often leads to marginalization
Normality/abnormality
• Multi-dimensional concepts
– Represents a range of possible perceptions
• Of what is normal and not normal
• Whether it is controlled or not by the norms of
society
• Times & places people can behave in an
abnormal way
• Most cultures disapprove of forms of
public behavior that are obviously not
being controlled
Zones of social behavior
Zones of social behavior
• Not static, fluid categories, spectrum of
possibilities
– Change with time & circumstance
– Normal in one group – abnormal in another
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Controlled normality (A)
Uncontrolled normality (D)
Controlled abnormality (B)
Uncontrolled abnormality (C)
Zones of social behavior
• A, D, B – it is assumed that the individual
is at least aware of what the social norms
are
– Whether they conform or not
• Substance use
– Traversing the categories of “bad” and “mad”
– Criminal & Intoxication
– Temporary madness
Which Group?
• Modes of action which do not conform to
the norms or values held by most of the
members of a group or society
• Deviance, stigma, zones of social behavior
• Reminder: What is regarded as 'deviant' is
as widely variable as the norms and
values that distinguish different cultures
and subcultures from one another.
“sub-cultures”
• In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a
subculture is a set of people with distinct sets of
behavior and beliefs that differentiate them from
a larger culture of which they are a part.
• The subculture may be distinctive because of
the age of its members, or by their race,
ethnicity, class and/or gender
• the qualities that determine a subculture as
distinct may be aesthetic, religious,
occupational, political, sexual or a combination
of these factors
Sub-cultures
• Versus “community”
• Sub-cultures have come to designate social
groups which are perceived to deviate from the
normative ideals of some community
• Small-scale association of people united by a
common interest
• Sub = “beneath” or “within”
• Variance from a larger normal, average,
dominant collectivity
– Consciousness of otherness or difference
Sub-cultures & difference
• Difference defined in contrast to existing
norms
• As opposing category – embraces those
norms in the process of differentiation
• Social & cultural reproduction
• Mimesis & alterity
• Hegemony -- the dominance of one group
over other groups, with or without the
threat of force
Hegemony & Cultural Control
• Cultural perspectives become skewed to
favor the dominant group.
• The cultural control that hegemony asserts
affects commonplace patterns of thought
• Hegemony controls the way new ideas are
rejected or become naturalized in a
process that subtly alters notions of
common sense in a given society.
Cultural hegemony
• Cultural hegemony is a concept coined by
Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci.
• a diverse culture can be ruled or
dominated by one group or class, that
everyday practices and shared beliefs
provide the foundation for complex
systems of domination.
– What’s bad, mad, normal, deviant, etc.
Urban Anthropology
• The urban – spatially dense, heterogeneous population
– Heterogeneity & “sub-cultures”
• Anthropology & ethnography applied to the study of urban
phenomena
• the causes, processes and consequences of urban
migration and urbanization
• cross-cultural similarities and variations in urban ways of
life
• how people negotiate urban life as a particular sociocultural
world
• rural-urban influences, neighborhoods, ethnicities,
subcultures, social networks and stratification to understand
how social relations are constructed and how cultural
knowledge is distributed in cities
Conceptual Approaches
• ecology models
• community, family, and network analyses
• studies of power/knowledge of planning
and architecture
• supralocal/local linkage analyses
• political economic, representational, and
discursive models of the city
City(s)
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The ethnic city - mosaic of enclaves
The divided city – hidden barriers of race & class
The gendered city – a male preserve
The contested city -- attention to ‘spatialising’ of
culture
The de-industrialized city
The global city
The informational city
The modernist & post-modernist city
The sacred city
The fortress city
Urbanity
• “The processes of segregation establish moral
distances which make the city a mosaic little
worlds which touch but do not interpenetrate.
• This make it possible for individuals to pass
quickly and easily from one moral milieu to
another, and encourages the fascinating but
dangerous experiment of living at the same time
in several different contiguous, but otherwise
widely separated worlds” (Park 1952:47)
dominant research trends in urban
anthropology
• Post-structural studies of race, class and
gender in urban context
– Structure & agency
• political economic studies of transnational
culture
• studies of the symbolic and social
production of urban space and planning
Space & Place
• Place and space -- central constructs within
geography, archaeology, architecture and
landscape architecture.
• emphasized spatial thinking, visualization, and
the use of non-linear and conceptual modes of
representation (maping, drawing, and model
building).
• other academic disciplines rarely studied space
and place.
• architectural design, settlement layout, or the
visual character of a region as the “setting”
• spatial patterns, the meanings that groups and
individuals attach to landscape and built
environment, and spatial modes of problem
solving usually not considered
The anthropology of space & place
• Built environments
• place is a space to which meaning has
been inscribed
– space as an abstract, universal, non-cultural
phenomenon
• we only have place: experienced,
practiced, local
• Built world and geographies as systems of
signs and symbols
– a language of signification
two different approaches to
space/place
• one that emphasizes the experiential,
situational, sensual, contingent aspects of
space
• the other emphasizes the brute force of
power, the structural, and the continuity of
structuring principles of built environments
Re-Thinking GEOGRAPHIES OF
IDENTITY
• Spatial-cultural habits of mind, body,
• immutable link between cultures, peoples,
and identities & specific places
• notion of culture based on the
inseparability of identity from place
– Deterritorialization
– Diasporic public spheres -- part of the cultural
dynamic of urban life in most countries
– migration and mass mediation
GEOGRAPHIES OF IDENTITY:
PUBLIC & PRIVATE/DOMESTIC
SPHERES/PLACES
• opposition between domestic (reproduction),
private, & public (production) provides the basis
of a framework to identify and explore place
• Domestic/private: public sphere clearly drawn in
societies where division of labor encompasses
more than age & sex differentiation
• mobility not just through geographic space but
social space (associations)