The philsophy and mechanisms of segregation, othering, and geography
February 5, 2024 12:43 PM Subscribe
I'd like to explore the idea that people and groups can be entirely separate while existing in the same space. What writing, research, or theories can I learn from?
2009's The City & the City consists of two cities that share the same geographic space, but residents of one cannot interact with residents of the other with driving outside the city and re-entering through the other city's designated entrance.
I think of this metaphor more and more often in my life, as I see people erect barriers between them and others. People block off others based on age, class, lifestyle, etc., while existing in the same space.
Some real examples:
- On a block, the people who own their houses interact with each other, but not the people who rent their houses. Both groups walk past the people living in tents as if they did not exist.
- In a company, white collar, blue collar, and temp employees form their own groups, often with race-based and gender-based sub-groups.
- At a restaurant even with a very diverse clientele, each table is almost always age and race segregated.
- There are many restaurants, shops, and venues that are completely racially segregated in their clientele, but without having much of a difference in content. It is almost as if having people of one race in a location drives away people of another race.
I'm curious about why this all happens, if it is trending in one direction or another, what factors increase segregation, and what factors decrease segregation.
My theory, which I hope research will either back up or deny, is that people are all very suspicious of each other because of the precarious finances in the USA. Everyone thinks someone else is out to get them. Racism takes advantage of this natural inclination to categorize entire groups as "dangerous." Secondly, individuals identify so strongly with their individual actions (job title, media consumption, etc) that this filters out relationships more effectively than commonalities (geographic location, humanity, ability) draw people together.
2009's The City & the City consists of two cities that share the same geographic space, but residents of one cannot interact with residents of the other with driving outside the city and re-entering through the other city's designated entrance.
I think of this metaphor more and more often in my life, as I see people erect barriers between them and others. People block off others based on age, class, lifestyle, etc., while existing in the same space.
Some real examples:
- On a block, the people who own their houses interact with each other, but not the people who rent their houses. Both groups walk past the people living in tents as if they did not exist.
- In a company, white collar, blue collar, and temp employees form their own groups, often with race-based and gender-based sub-groups.
- At a restaurant even with a very diverse clientele, each table is almost always age and race segregated.
- There are many restaurants, shops, and venues that are completely racially segregated in their clientele, but without having much of a difference in content. It is almost as if having people of one race in a location drives away people of another race.
I'm curious about why this all happens, if it is trending in one direction or another, what factors increase segregation, and what factors decrease segregation.
My theory, which I hope research will either back up or deny, is that people are all very suspicious of each other because of the precarious finances in the USA. Everyone thinks someone else is out to get them. Racism takes advantage of this natural inclination to categorize entire groups as "dangerous." Secondly, individuals identify so strongly with their individual actions (job title, media consumption, etc) that this filters out relationships more effectively than commonalities (geographic location, humanity, ability) draw people together.
It would definitely be worth considering Gene Denby on Housing Segregation in Everything.
posted by EvaDestruction at 2:42 PM on February 5
posted by EvaDestruction at 2:42 PM on February 5
At least in the U.S. this didn't happen just because people were suspicious of each other; at almost every step the government took specific action to help enshrine segregation. The Color of Law is a good background. Caste is another. You could also look into the way that major transportation infrastructure projects have been used to segregate people.
posted by brookeb at 4:02 PM on February 5 [4 favorites]
posted by brookeb at 4:02 PM on February 5 [4 favorites]
The City and the City is a wonderful book. It has been ages, but, I think that reading Michel Foucault's work in Discipline and Punish, and specifically on the Panopticon, would be of interest, on how we internalize systems of enforcement and oppression. Particularly in relation to Breach as a concept and a function in TCATC.
posted by hovey at 4:13 PM on February 5 [1 favorite]
posted by hovey at 4:13 PM on February 5 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks for all these suggestions.
I'm well versed in the current dialogue on how policy is used as a tool to enforce segregation, and of the institutional racism that pervades american history. But I feel like my brain is totally full of this level of thinking, at the expense of bigger and smaller picture thinking.
What I'm really curious about is the step lower, and the step higher.
Why do people self-segregate the restaurants they attend, when there are no more laws enforcing it? When an apartment is Equal Opportunity with a diverse mix of residents, why do they still segregate?
And at a higher level, how do the systems of self-segregation and isolation work differently in America vs. other countries, similar or different? Are there lessons to learn from apartheid, from cast systems, etc that can help make sense of American self-segregation?
posted by rebent at 4:20 PM on February 5
I'm well versed in the current dialogue on how policy is used as a tool to enforce segregation, and of the institutional racism that pervades american history. But I feel like my brain is totally full of this level of thinking, at the expense of bigger and smaller picture thinking.
What I'm really curious about is the step lower, and the step higher.
Why do people self-segregate the restaurants they attend, when there are no more laws enforcing it? When an apartment is Equal Opportunity with a diverse mix of residents, why do they still segregate?
And at a higher level, how do the systems of self-segregation and isolation work differently in America vs. other countries, similar or different? Are there lessons to learn from apartheid, from cast systems, etc that can help make sense of American self-segregation?
posted by rebent at 4:20 PM on February 5
What I'm really curious about is the step lower, and the step higherWell the step higher is one of the foundational questions of the whole field of sociology as an academic discipline, so you'll run into a colossal literature running through a hundred and fifty or more years of study. Social cohesion is one of the terms you might be interested in; social ties, community formation, social capital. Older and more dated terms, no longer in use (at least in the normative sense): assimilation, integration.
For what it's worth your question about the voluntary segregation of groups is one of the oldest academic sociological questions in the United States. Robert E. Park was interested in it well before the First World War, in the context of what he saw as immigrant groups' tendency to self-segregate into insular communities---which of course is another way of describing self-organising groups of people gathering for mutual support, and developing strong community ties.
On more recent sociology, your theory about mutual suspicion undermining communities that might otherwise exist sounds a lot like Putnam's Bowling Alone, which was hugely influential through the 2000s, and has been correspondingly criticised, then and more recently.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:55 PM on February 5 [1 favorite]
At the lower level, your question about restaurant patrons self-segregating might be explored in Beverly Daniel Tatum's book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race.
posted by airplant at 6:36 PM on February 5
posted by airplant at 6:36 PM on February 5
You may be interested in Rob Chaskin’s Integrating the Inner City, about Chicago’s Plan for Transformation in the 2000s, which replaced public housing projects that had intensely concentrated poverty with mixed income development. The book is based on interviews with residents (owners, market rate renters, and subsidized renters) in three developments and covers residents’ perspectives on some of the issues you mention- patterns of segregation within geographic integration.
posted by yarrow at 6:13 AM on February 6
posted by yarrow at 6:13 AM on February 6
Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman writes about this phenomenon, specifically in the context of cities, in a chapter called "Out of Touch Together" in his book Liquid Times. It might fit with your bigger-picture interest, as he frames it in a broader analysis of modernity based on the 'liquification' of all traditionally secure identities and relationships, an idea with which he became famous.
posted by Desertshore at 6:38 AM on February 6
posted by Desertshore at 6:38 AM on February 6
You might find some material about self-segregation by body-type and attractiveness in Survival of the Prettiest.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 2:44 PM on February 6
posted by Winnie the Proust at 2:44 PM on February 6
Why do people self-segregate the restaurants they attend, when there are no more laws enforcing it?
There’s a one-variable model that changes only “am I comfortable when less than X% of the people around me are like me?”. Generate random populations, give them preferences with a mean value of X, let them move if they’re not comfortable. X doesn’t have to be near 100% for the modeled communities to segregate. This is way too simple to describe reality, but it might be realistic enough that it’s easy to invoke/reinforce.
(Can’t remember the author! NetLogo? Might have been linked here? Triangle-square-circle society?)
posted by clew at 3:11 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]
There’s a one-variable model that changes only “am I comfortable when less than X% of the people around me are like me?”. Generate random populations, give them preferences with a mean value of X, let them move if they’re not comfortable. X doesn’t have to be near 100% for the modeled communities to segregate. This is way too simple to describe reality, but it might be realistic enough that it’s easy to invoke/reinforce.
(Can’t remember the author! NetLogo? Might have been linked here? Triangle-square-circle society?)
posted by clew at 3:11 PM on February 6 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Yeah, I remember that. Fantastic simulation.
posted by rebent at 8:36 PM on February 7
posted by rebent at 8:36 PM on February 7
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On a more general note, I also had saved this bookmark to a 2023 Berekley article.
Just FWIW.
posted by forthright at 1:10 PM on February 5 [1 favorite]