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Grounding Citizenship: Toward a Political Psychology ofPublic
Spacepops_866 123..143Andrs Di MassoUniversity of Barcelona
This article considers the political nature of public space and
explores its psychological relevance as a naturalarena of
citizenship. Drawing on literature in social psychology,
environmental psychology, and politicalgeography, the article
addresses how common understandings of normative behavior in public
are often basedon particular constructions of place and
people-space relations. In so doing, it shows how such
culturallyshared locational notions are essentially contested in
relation to their political significance and ideologicalorientation
within a particular public socio-spatial context. It is argued that
claims for and demands on publicspace are enshrined in broader
struggles over the psychological boundaries of belonging, identity,
and civicentitlements which are central to the contentious issue of
citizenship. This is illustrated through the analysis ofan
emblematic struggle over a public space located in the Old Town of
Barcelona between 1999 and 2007,triggered by the social
appropriation of an undeveloped urban lot. The article pinpoints
how considering thematerial dimension of public space may also
enrich existing psychological approaches to citizenship.KEY WORDS:
public space, psychological significance, citizenship, right to the
city, territoriality
Recent research in social psychology has stressed the
fundamental role of space, place, andenvironmental categories in
the constitution of subjectivity and the regulation of social
interaction(Aiello & Bonaiuto, 2003; Bonaiuto & Bonnes,
2000; Dixon & Durrheim, 2000). Mostly assuminga discursive
epistemological framework (Billig, 1987; Edwards & Potter,
1992; Potter & Wetherell,1987), this emerging trend encompasses
a varied set of approaches interested in the social construc-tion
of space. The main topics investigated include the normative
meaning of morally connotedspatial discourse regulating
neighborhood relations (e.g., Stokoe & Wallwork, 2003); the
languageof place as a system of rhetorical warrants reproducing
ideologies of racial exclusion (e.g., Dixon& Durrheim, 2004;
Dixon, Foster, Durrheim, & Wilbraham, 1994); the role of
place-discourse inwomens narratives of identity (e.g., Taylor,
2005); or the value of landscape rhetoric in theconstruction of
nationhood (e.g., Wallwork & Dixon, 2004). Building on a
well-known idea inenvironmental psychology and human geography,
according to which personal experience isunavoidably located
(Proshansky, Fabian, & Kaminoff, 1983; Tuan, 1977), the main
point made bythe bulk of these studies is that our individual and
shared interpretations of space and place-behaviorare also
culture-bound discursive resources that accomplish functions in
larger sequences of social(inter)action, often echoing broad
ideological processes.
A particular strand within this set of studies has more recently
been concerned with the politicalsignificance of peoples
psychological representations of space, accepting that these shape
peo-
Political Psychology, Vol. 33, No. 1, 2012doi:
10.1111/j.1467-9221.2011.00866.x
1230162-895X 2012 International Society of Political
Psychology
Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ,and PO Box 378
Carlton South, 3053 Victoria, Australia
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ples understandings of who belongs, the rights and freedoms that
people may claim and exercise,decisions where we feel at home and
out of place, where we may move to, or avoid, and muchmore besides
(Hopkins & Dixon, 2006, p. 174). According to these authors,
places are relevant notjust because they afford and shape
psychological experiences, but also because such
psychologicalconstructs may be socially deployed to provoke
particular political effects aligned with peoplesindividual or
collective interests and demands. This justifies Hopkins and Dixons
claim for politicalpsychology to recover the micropolitics of
peoples everyday constructions of place and space (p.174). This
task involves both acknowledging the representations of place which
imply psychologicalnotions of who we are, where we belong, and to
whom we are committed, as well as the discursiveprocesses that make
place-representations work as symbolic devices with a political
value.
This twofold political and psychological value of place
representations is particularly clearwhen applied to the public
space, the stage upon which the drama of communal life
unfolds(Carr, Francis, Rivlin, & Stone, 1992, p. 3). Public
spaces are the natural arena of citizenship,where individuals,
groups, and crowds become political subjects. They are
sociophysical settingswhere public life occurs on the basis of open
visibility, scrutiny, and concern, supporting publicinterest and
citizens well-being (Brill, 1989). In streets, squares, parks, and
loose urban spaces,society renders itself visible as citizenship
finds in them a place to be enacted and demanded(Borja & Mux,
2003).
On a psychological level, citizens behavior in public is
regulated by normative representationsthat tell us what actions are
(in)appropriate, which spatial uses are (not) expected under
specificcircumstances, and who is (not) a legitimate public within
the confines of normal coexistence(Cresswell, 1996; Dixon, Levine,
& McAuley, 2006). Ordinary understandings of normal anddeviant
behavior in public are psychologically relevant at least for two
reasons. First, they inform andorient the ways in which we perceive
and perform everyday sociospatial behavior in the public
realm.Second, they can be rhetorically used and contested in order
to warrant specific spatial claims andactions which may be
politically controversial (e.g., legitimizing the exclusion of
social groups,justifying socially unwanted urban development
programs, transgressing a by-law regulating inci-vilities, etc.).
This way, public space shows its vocation as a politically and
psychologically mean-ingful place in the ordinary lives of
citizens.
These opening comments support Hopkins and Dixons (2006)
proposal to seriously considerplace, and particularly public space,
a relevant topic in political psychologists research agenda.
Thisarticle contributes further arguments by exploring the
political-psychological significance of publicspace with regard to
matters of citizenship. Existing psychological approaches to
citizenship haveneglected the study of public space as its primary
setting, as much as the scarce psychologicalperspectives on public
space have downplayed its fundamental significance in the personal
and socialexperience of being a citizen (or not). The article
broaches this conceptual gap, analyzing thepsychological
assumptions and political implications of public space discourse as
related to citizen-ship enactments and demands. In this frame,
public space is tackled as the primary place wherecitizenship
status and space-discourse become materially embodied and
performed.
The Political Nature of Public Space
The idea that public space has an intrinsically political
significance seems to be widely sup-ported. Following Carr et al.
(1992), it is impossible to understand public life and the spaces
inwhich it takes place without recognising the political nature of
public activities (p. 45). Public lifeimportantly depends on social
and political contexts that make public spaces work for the
commongood. The public space reflects social exchanges between
individual and collective affairs, featuringpersonal rights that
are both politically and spatially grounded, such as the right to
the city(Lefebvre, 1968; Mitchell, 2003) and freedom of action in
the urban open space (Rivlin, 1994).
124 Di Masso
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However, freedom and rights in public space are limited by
safety requirements, private inter-vention, and cultural standards
of moral order and decorum (Dixon et al., 2006). Hence social life
inpublic spaces is informed and regulated by a value-loaded
political tension between liberty andcontrol. This tension frames
democratic life in the city, both enabling and constraining the
citizensexercise of free right to the city.
This last term complicates the truism according to which public
life must be at the service of anelusive common good. While
accepting that ideally democratic public spaces must be responsive
tothe citizens needs, rights, and demands (Carr et al., 1992), in
practice different sectors of thepublicusers, urban managers,
private owners, public authorities, designers, civic
organizations,social movements, etc.often hold contested views of
what is expected and what can be claimed inthe public territory
(Francis, 1989; Zube, 1986). Spatial conflicts may therefore be
related toopposing conceptions of who has right of use, occupation,
control, management, and transformationof one public space under
disputed criteria of legitimacy (Burte, 2003).
One structural friction has been theorized by critical studies
in urban geography and urbansociology alerting us to a steady
decline of public space due to its progressive
privatization.According to this view, contemporary city-making
processes in Western cities tend to createhighly commodified urban
environments that look like public spaces but are constrained by
thegoals of private capital (e.g., shopping malls, private open
plazas, theme park-neighborhoods, etc.;Low & Smith, 2006;
Sorkin, 1992). Rules of free access and public use in these spaces
aretransformed into restrictive criteria of admission by strict
surveillance devices (Fyfe & Bannister,1996), territorial
markers leading to militarized landscapes (Davis, 1992), and social
segregationof the undesirable to protect the middle-class citizen
(Boddy, 1992; Mitchell, 1995). On aneighborhood level, the creation
of dead public spaces (Sennett, 1974) is represented by design-led
urban regeneration programs and gentrification processes attracting
high-income dwellers andentrepreneurial activities to the detriment
of lower-class local inhabitants (e.g., see Hamnett, 1991;Harvey,
2005; Smith, 1996; Zukin, 1995). Adding to, but also criticizing,
this terminal diagnosisof public space, another strand of empirical
studies has highlighted the irreducible dimension ofcontestation
and political resistance that frequently accompanies the
domestication guidelines ofdominant public space making (e.g.,
Atkinson, 2003; Jackson, 1998; Staeheli & Thompson,1997).
Ultimately, these studies that stress the political significance
of public space have neverthelessneglected at least two
psychologically related dimensions of life in public. A first issue
relates to thenature of space as a psychological category of
representation, whose embedded meanings and valuesare often
socially and politically contested. To the extent that such spatial
meanings and values areidentity-related, locational disputes in
public spaces will be both politically meaningful
andpsychologically consequential. A second underspecified issue
points directly to psychologicalassumptions of belonging, civic
entitlements, and normative behavior shaping social life in
publicspaces, which lie at the very core of citizenship matters.
The following sections address this doubleneglect.
The Psychological Significance of Public Space
Public spaces are shaped by urban policies, economic forces, and
cultural trends in contexts ofpolitical power enabling and
constraining specific forms of human interaction (Cresswell,
2004;Gieryn, 2000). However, public spaces are psychologically
significant because they are geographicalspots involving complex
patterns of material aspects, meanings, values, social activities,
and evenprofound existential experiences (Canter, 1977; Relph,
1976; Stokols & Shumaker, 1981). Environ-mental psychology has
accounted for how people and space become mutually constituted
andregulated, affording some concepts that are useful in order to
study public spaces.
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First, public spaces can be central to peoples self-definitions,
both individually and collectively,so individuals know who I am or
who we are just by locating themselves and others. Place-identity
has been referred to as a specific subidentity in its own right,
and urban-place identity asa pattern of beliefs, feelings, and
expectations regarding public spaces and places and, even
moreimportantly, a dimension of competence relevant to how
adequately the individual uses thesephysical settings as well as
the appropriate strategies for successfully navigating through
thesettings (Proshansky, 1978, p. 167). Urban-place identity
therefore refers to a part of the self that isderived from
socialization in city life, including social attributes, skills,
differentiated public socialroles, and ways of solving problems in
public spaces.
Second, belonging to different social groups and having
different social roles influence howpublic space and identity
relate to each other. Lalli (1992) referred to an urban-related
identitywith the psychological function of providing positive
self-evaluations for the residents (or, wecould add, the users) of
a place. He argued that urban environments have a social image, or
a setof symbolic meanings (embodied in social presences, spatial
features, cultural celebrations, etc.)that makes them singular and
unique, socially differentiating residents and users from the rest
ofthe people and providing a subjective feeling of place-based
selfness and otherness. Therefore,peoples senses of self can derive
from their identification with a social category whose
membersbelong to a certain urban area. This view treats
place-identity as a social identity (Tajfel & Turner,1986) and
implies that urban-related identities will be motivated by the
general goal of maximiz-ing positive self-distinction compared to
place-based outgroups (Bonaiuto, Breakwell, & Cano,1996).
A third psychological notion which is deemed important to public
space dynamics is territo-riality, a pattern of behavior and
attitudes (. . .) based on perceived, attempted, or actual control
ofa definable physical space (. . .) that may involve habitual
occupation, defense, personalization, andmarking of it (Gifford,
1987, p. 120). Public spaces may work as territories whenever
people try toexert control over it, eventually leading to spatial
conflicts that shed light on the two main functionsof
territoriality: regulation of social interaction and the display of
identity (Brower, 1980). Inneighborhood and community spaces
territorial behavior primarily indicates and reinforces aningroup
sense of who belongs to the place (i.e., Lallis urban-related
identities). Also, competition fora public site as the only space
available for carrying out incompatible activities might lead
tostruggles over the uses of that site, sometimes involving
occupation, eviction, aggression, andviolence (Bell, Fischer, Baum,
& Greene, 1996). Political violence will appear via
territorialitywhen all other means have been exhausted, when an
individual is unaware of alternatives, or whenan individual is
denied other meanssuch as when some groups, through poverty or
discrimination,are denied equal access to the justice system
(Gifford, 1987, p. 131). Similarly, Merelman (1988)underlines this
political facet of territoriality asserting that territory is an
important resource in thestruggle for power and status (. . .)
liable to political manipulation (p. 579).
Hence, both psychologically and politically speaking, through
territorial behavior space reifiespower and organizes the
identities of, and social interactions between, the controlled and
thecontroller (Sack, 1986). Power imbalances become visible in
public spaces whenever sociallydisadvantaged individuals (e.g.,
homeless, squatters, drunks, etc.) are sanctioned and removed
fromthe urban territory for using it in ways that defy the dominant
conception of order in the city-space,breaching a micropolitics of
the urban environment that calls for disciplined sociospatial
behavior(Foucault, 1986). Power reveals itself then as an imposed
or self-applied restriction of freedom ofaction in the public space
(Lukes, 2005). Conversely, sociospatial resistance (e.g., against
urbandevelopment programs perceived as exclusionary) may embody a
challenge to dominant powerarrangements of the city space via
territorial occupation of the public space. As Mitchell (1995)
andSibley (1995) have noted, the demands of social justice by the
socially disadvantaged in the cityrequire a subversion of its
dominant geographies of exclusion.
126 Di Masso
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Altogether, territorial behavior, urban place-identity, and
urban-related identity are psycho-logical constructs that organize
peoples ordinary relationships with public spaces. That
peopleidentify themselves with their urban spaces (e.g., streets,
quarters, suburbs, etc.), developing asense of collective belonging
to them and sometimes claiming ownership when faced with
out-siders, are culturally familiar situations. These psychological
assumptions may be eventuallyinvoked in particular circumstances to
explain, justify, or discount space-related behaviors
(e.g.,urinating in my street, vendors invading our neighborhood,
etc). Far beyond their cognitivesignificance for the individual,
the language of place-identity and accounts of territoriality
mayresonate with broader debates about the sociospatial order in
the city. The focus of analysis inthese cases may conveniently
shift to the rhetorical uses of place-related psychological states
thatwarrant or discount spatially organized power arrangements.
Psychological representations ofbehavior in public can therefore
become politically connotated discursive devices that
persistentlydemonstrate citizenship concerns.
Locating Citizenship: Political-Psychological Significance
Given that public space is a natural arena of citizenship, it is
striking how psychologicalapproaches to citizenship have generally
disregarded this material location. There seems to be noplace for
public space in these studies: citizenship appears essentially
dislocated.
General approaches to citizenship tend to emphasize social,
cultural, and political dimensions(Marshall, 1950), the rights and
duties implicated in community-based political practices(Bellamy,
2008), the qualities and conditions of equal membership in a given
political community(McKinnon & Hampsher-Monk, 2000) and
(in)equity in the allocation of resources (Turner,1993).
Social-psychological studies have stressed social identification
processes and membershipdynamics, together with cultural
representations and their mobilization through discourse
(Condor& Gibson, 2007; Haste, 2004; Sanchez-Mazas & Klein,
2003). More specifically, Barnes, Auburn,and Lea (2004) provide
sensitive psychological concepts that usefully examine
citizenshipbeyond trait theory, social learning theory, and
justice-based models (Tyler, Rasinski, & Griffin,1986). In
their view, citizenship is a constant enactment of membership
defined by a negotiationof status as a legitimate occupant in the
public sphere. Issues of rights and identity articulatepractices of
citizenship in which categorization, identification, and feelings
of belonging to thepolitical community, together with normative
entitlements and social recognition, become corepsychological
notions. Crucially, citizenship is conceived as a social
construction that becomesrealised through contestation. This
justifies the analysis of the complex formations of
belonging(Barnes et al., 2004) that are permanently claimed,
warranted, and rebutted through citizenshipdiscourse.
However, as Shotter (1993) states, it is the politically
contested nature of the concept ofcitizenship what defines the
psychological experience of being a citizen. In his terms,
citizenshipis a status which one must struggle to attain in the
face of competing versions of what is properto struggle for. Its
definition is a part of a practical politics in which
psychologically, whatwould seem to be important is the way in which
ones placement or positioning (in relation tothe others around
one), not only give rise to feelings which motivate and guide one
in thatstruggle, but also give one access (or not) to the
ontological resources required to be able toproperly participate in
that struggle (pp. 115116). Hence, psychological feelings of
citizenshipbelonging are enmeshed in politicized struggles whereby
the conditions of the citizens identityare actively negotiated and
contested.
Despite Shotters psychological account being explicitly embedded
in the micropoliticsof citizenship, it is not sensitive to the
everyday stages in which symbolic struggles to attaincitizen status
become more apparent, namely, public spaces. Likewise, Barnes et
al.s (2004) focus
127Grounding Citizenship
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on contestation, claim making, and negotiation of membership to
the legitimate categoryof citizenship unfairly fails to notice
citizenships most prominent locations. On the whole,psychological
approaches to citizenship have treated membership, belonging,
identity, entitle-ments, legitimacy, and recognition of rights as
displacedwhether cognitive or discursiveentities.
Exceptionally, Dixon et al.s (2006) recent study of everyday
attitudes towards street drinking asa morally connoted incivility
sheds light on a number of topics that are pertinent in the study
ofpublic space from the perspective of citizenship. These authors
interviewed 59 Lancaster citizens inthe towns most central public
space, exploring attitudes towards drinking in public in light of
arecently introduced ban on such behavior. The results of their
discursive analysis showed howpeoples responses constructed street
drinking as an infringement of civic entitlements and as a formof
visual defilement, breaching the established meanings of the place
and generally supporting anideological tradition of public space
that promoted sanitization or purification (Sibley, 1995),meaning
the removal of certain kinds of people not conceived as
legitimately belonging to thepublic category (e.g., people drinking
in the streets). The study highlighted also an
ideologicalopposition (Billig et al., 1988) between freedom and
control in public spaces and contradictions inthe category of
admissible publics.
Dixon et al.s study instructs us on how psychological
understandings of behavior in public maystrongly depend on
particular constructions of place-meaning that may be invoked to
warrantdifferent arrangements of social order in the public realm.
The study reveals how public spaces(dis)orderliness involves
psychological assumptions about (il)legitimate memberships to the
publiccategory, threats to civic rights and normative spatial
entitlements, that shape, warrant, and contestpeoples statuses and
identities as citizens.
This last question has been precisely and directly addressed by
urban sociologists and politi-cal geographers who consider the
right to the city a fundamental right defining citizenship
status.The right to the city necessitates direct involvement in the
production and transformation of theurban territory (Gilbert &
Phillips, 2003; Lefebvre, 1968) and is often achieved through
loca-tional conflicts (Mitchell, 2003) between different social
actors. In this frame, citizenship statusis defined as a practical
achievement that involves geographical commotions: the right to the
cityis the right to be in and to produce city spaces in order to
make them public. A core idea here isthat both citizenship and
public space structurally involve processes of social exclusion
(e.g.,Clarke, 2008; Kofman, 1995; Mitchell, 2003; Momen, 2005;
Staeheli, 2008). The urban openspace becomes public when subaltern
groups (Fraser, 1990), counterpublics (Crawford, 1995) orinformal
actors (Groth & Corijn, 2005) appropriate it in order to become
admissible citizens. AsStaeheli and Thompson (1997) have argued,
groups of people who are seen as problems for thepublic may display
territorial strategies of transgression and resistance as a way of
claiminglegitimate membership to citizenship, but without belonging
to the mainstream community ofpublics. Challenging the normative
categories of social life in the public realm (Crawford,
1995),uncomfortable presences in public space demand positive
recognition of their community mem-bership and citizen status
through the legitimate exercise of their right to the city.
Clearly, thefocus on the interface between the right to the city,
spatial production, and social exclusionextends classical studies
on bottom-up models of citizenship based on social protest and
publicrepresentation (e.g., Tarrow, 1998).
Taken together, these sets of studies show that the normative
entitlements, identity claims, andpolitical struggles for social
belonging that define citizenship status are primarily located in
publicspace. This entails that if people cannot be present in
public spaces (. . .) without feeling uncom-fortable, victimized
and basically out-of-place, then it must be questionable whether or
not thesepeople can be regarded as citizens at all (Painter &
Philo, 1995, p. 115, quoted in Hopkins & Dixon,2006, italics
added).
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Research Context: The Hole of Shame Struggle in Barcelona
The conceptual framework presented above is discussed in this
article analyzing a conflict overpublic space located in the old
city center of Barcelona (Spain). This conflict dates back to
1985,when a local program of urban development (the so-called PERI)
promised to improve urban lifeconditions in Santa Caterina, one of
the old medieval neighborhoods in Barcelonas historical
center(Busquets, 2004). The program would involve new housing,
civic facilities, and public spaces for thelong-time impoverished
population of the neighborhood (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 1989).
However,the works started as late as 1999 amidst an atmosphere of
suspicion on the part of the localinhabitants, who argued that the
Town Council had deliberately left Santa Caterina to deteriorate
inorder to gentrify the area, thus forcing the traditional lower
class inhabitants to leave (Mas & Verger,2004). Gathered
against a city model perceived as a threat to local residents, a
group of neighborsfollowed by social movements and groups of
squatters claimed for a green public space such as theone foreseen
in the original 1985 proposal.1 To do so, they occupied an empty
space in the middleof the neighborhood that remained following the
demolition of buildings. Through territorial appro-priation they
planted trees, laid flower-beds, and installed self-made benches
and urban furniture.This first space was called the Hole of Shame,
a symbolic name that denounced the institutionalidleness towards
the place, and was destroyed by the diggers after a violent police
raid in 2002. Oneyear later, neighbors and social movements
literally knocked down a wall of concrete built by thelocal
administration to impede access to the space. The Park of the Hole
of Shame was created in2004, embodying a political neighborhood
strategy of resistance to gain a public space for the
localcitizens. From that moment, the institutional powers (the Town
Council and the developers), on theone hand, and the occupants of
the space, on the other hand, struggled for the territorial control
ofthe place (see Codina, 2005). The former aimed to redevelop the
space, whereas the latter weredetermined to maintain the place as a
self-managed public space protected from institutionalcommandeering
and urban speculation. Adding to this tension, a third party in the
dispute was aplatform of local entities opposing both the official
development plan and the spatial appropriation.Finally, after a
participatory process the occupants of the space were evicted by
the police and theHole of Shame was redeveloped in 2007 according
to official standards of public space design.
During the eight years of open conflict, the Hole of Shame case
became a paradigmatic protestagainst local development programs in
Barcelonas urban scene broadly perceived as benefittingprivate
investments and tourism, against the needs and demands of the local
citizens. For researchpurposes, the case was selected for three
reasons. First, it gathered in one single urban setting themain
politically connoted controversies linked to contemporary public
space making (e.g., Jackson,1998; Mitchell, 2003; Smith, 1996;
Sorkin, 1992); second, it provided rich empirical evidence
toexplore the role of space discourse in shaping psychological
representations of citizens normal anddeviant behavior in public,
along with their rhetorical value (Dixon et al., 2006); and third,
it was aunique opportunity to examine embodied enactments of the
right to the city linked to politicallycontested views of
citizenship belonging and status (Shotter, 1993; Staeheli &
Thompson, 1997).
Data and Analytical Framework
The Hole of Shame conflict is approached here as an instrumental
case study (Stake, 1994).Therefore it does not confine its value to
a full description of the conflict, and it is not the aim eitherto
demonstrate broad representativeness. Its instrumental function
resides in its capacity to provide
1 The information about the process of spatial occupation
derives from successive personal interviews to representatives
ofsocial movements, the spokesman of the urban developers
responsible for the development of Santa Caterina, politicians
ofthe District, and leaders of neighborhood associations. Details
of the interviewing process appear in the analytical
frameworksection.
129Grounding Citizenship
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insight into how some possible psychological representations of
public space can be connected torelated understandings of
citizenship (Silverman, 2005). Since the Hole of Shame created a
discur-sive context persistently reconstructed using a locational
language, i.e., discursive uses of publicspace meanings and
behaviors, these discourses were chosen as the main focus of
analysis, payingattention to the ways such discursive practices and
related embodied actions could shape, warrant,and contest different
normative conceptions of citizenship.
The exploration of locational constructions of citizenship
justifies the use of a discursive andrhetorical framework (Billig,
1991; Edwards & Potter, 1992; Potter & Wetherell, 1987). As
Haste(2004) has noted, there is a need in political psychology to
examine how justifications of the citizenare reworked in dialogue,
which brings the analysis of discourse and narrative to the fore.
Accord-ingly, a first step in the research was to collect as much
textual information about the case as possible.A total of 208
documents were gathered, including newspaper articles, official
technical documents,institutional announcements, social movements
leaflets, and manifestos and reports from neighbor-hood assemblies.
Sixteen in-depth interviews were then conducted as primary sources
to examine thecase, covering the totality of social groups and
organizations directly and explicitly involved in theconflict,
including politicians, developers, occupants, and other organized
local inhabitants. Under-stood as a purposive sampling strategy
(Silverman, 2005), the spokespeople of these organizationswere
considered to represent those subjects for which discourses about
the public space at stake weremost neatly expressed and polarized,
that is, they were approached as critical cases (Flick,
2006).Interviewees were contacted by the author personally or via
telephone. Interviews took place in theorganizations premises
in/around the Hole of Shame and lasted between 30 and 120
minutes.Questions ranged from general opinions on the causes of the
struggle (e.g., How do you explain theHole of Shame conflict?) to
detailed questions on the users, activities, and specific
conflictingepisodes (e.g., Who uses the space?, How was the
concrete wall knocked down?).
Interviews were fully transcribed and the analysis comprised
identifying those excerpts in whichthe interviewees signified the
Hole of Shame using spatial language (e.g., here, the space
isdeteriorated, etc.), and particular constructions of people-space
relations (e.g., it belongs to us,they behave as if the space was
theirs, etc.). Special attention was paid to membership
formulationsand allusions to citizenship linked to those spatial
meanings, being sensitive to their normativeconnotations and their
implied psychological assumptions (e.g., see Dixon et al., 2006;
Stokoe &Wallwork, 2003). The analysis then focused both on the
social actions performed by such spatialformulations in the context
of the conflict (e.g., accusation, justification, exclusion, etc.;
see Edwards& Potter, 1992) and on their rhetorical orientation
(i.e., how they are embedded in argumentsdesigned to undermine
alternative spatial meanings, refracting ideological tensions; see
Billig,1991). Finally, the implications of such locational
constructions for citizenship status were con-sidered. The
discursive analysis did not focus on the fine-grain details of turn
taking and themicrolinguistic features of the texts, but rather on
the broad rhetorical patterns mobilized throughspatial discourse
together with the most prominent psychodiscursive maneuvers
displayed in theaccounts (e.g., Wetherell & Edley, 1999). The
extracts in the analysis below were selected from atotal of 143,
representing recurrent patterns of arguments linking public space
discourse to citizen-ship concerns.
Analysis and Discussion
The result of the analytical process is discussed below in two
main subsections that correspondto the recurring discourses above
mentioned: (1) citizenship entitlements in public space
constructedusing place-belonging criteria; and (2) normative
behaviors in public constructed via a rhetoric ofspatial manners.
The analysis is then linked to issues of materiality and embodiment
in a thirdsubsection.
130 Di Masso
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Place-Belonging and Citizenship Entitlements in Public Space
The discourses about the Hole of Shame revealed that universal
access to public space, freedomof use, and appropriation (Francis,
1989; Lynch, 1981; Rivlin, 1994) are in practice quite
contro-versial. The accounts given by the agents involved in the
conflict show that the spatial entitlementsthat define the right to
the city are often constrained by place-based categorizations with
normativeeffects. Extracts 1 to 3 are discussed in three successive
subsections, each warranting the three mainpositions in the Hole of
Shame conflict. The rhetorical organization in the three accounts
is effectivebecause it draws on shared understandings of the kinds
of spatial entitlements attributed to twosubcategories of citizens:
neighbors2 and the rest of the city.
Neighbors Entitlements Prevail
Extract 1F: The original idea, lets say, was to transform what
was a busy road such as Via Laietanainto a space for the people
that live there (. . .) at the same time, a space that can
generatemovement from the city to Ciutat Vella, I mean, that
facilitates access by the rest of the cityto all the good things
that one can find in that part of Ciutat Vella: palaces, easy
access fromthe city to La Ribera, with the Picasso museum and all
the stories that one can find there,as an area that leads towards
Barceloneta, an open space, a space open, where the first toenjoy
it are the neighbors, but that the city can enjoy globally, and
that stops being aproblematic space, where social or human problems
are concentrated, let it be a space morefor the city, no?(Interview
with the representative of the developers).
The urban developer in extract 1 justifies that the Hole of
Shame must be transformed by arguing thatmaking it accessible to
all the citizens will solve social problems seemingly located in
that (lockedup) area. To do so, he appeals to the culturally
familiar image of public space as the highest degreeof social
inclusion and accessibility, an enjoyable space for the city
globally which is open toeverybody and not exclusive of some groups
of people (i.e., the occupants). However, the developeradds further
arguments so as not to overlook another common assumption, namely,
that localinhabitants have special rights over their local spaces
(a space for the people that live there,where the first to enjoy it
are the neighbors). This tension about a public space being open
toeverybody, albeit with a slight privilege of use by the local
inhabitants, allows the urban developerto manage a dilemma of
inclusion (Wallwork & Dixon, 2004): he had to defend the local
inhabitantsright to public space in a way that did not exclude the
rest of the citizens, and vice versa. In doingso, he introduces a
first boundary within the right to the city. Put differently,
rights to public spacepresent a graduation that locates one
category of citizens (the neighbors that live there), by virtueof
spatial closeness and place-relatedness, on the top of a hierarchy
of citizenships spatial entitle-ments. Public spaces are places
more for its nearest neighbors, its primary beneficiaries, than
forother citizens. Also handling a dilemma of stake (Edwards &
Potter, 1992), this discourse protectedthe institutional position
of the developers from accusations that the Hole of Shame was
beingcommandeered to gentrify the area (i.e., to the detriment of
local inhabitants).
2 I will use the term neighbors in the analysis as a synonym of
local inhabitants, to preserve the connotation of the originalword
in Spanish (vecinos), which implies belonging to the neighborhood,
and not just individuals leaving next door to eachother.
131Grounding Citizenship
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Outsiders Lacking Place-Identity are Less EntitledThe hierarchy
of citizens spatial entitlements was also rhetorically useful for
the local inhab-
itants who rejected the spatial occupation:
Extract 2G: The process that, well, a little bit, lets say
super-large that the PERI triggered and all itschanges, of course,
a thing that can be done in 4 or 5 years, you do it in 19, it
creates conflict(. . .) and the years of load that this entails for
the neighbors, then it causes that, lets say thatmore external
agents of the Casc Antic surroundings also intervene, then there
are occupiedbuildings, there are more alternative collectives that
also get into this dynamic of interven-tion upon this space that
has been abandoned by the Ajuntament.
S: And one must say that not all of those who are in the space,
not all of them are from theCasc Antic nor do they live in the Casc
Antic(Interview with two representatives of neighbors supporting
the official development of thespace).
The account in extract 2 works as an accusation towards the City
Council (Ayuntamiento) forallowing the spatial occupation, causing
the conflict in the Hole of Shame and neglecting the needsof the
local inhabitants. This accusation is discursively built by
appealing to the arrival of illegitimatecategories of people (more
external agents, of the Casc Antic surroundings, who do not live
inthe neighborhood). In this narrative of complaint, external
agents not belonging to the neighborhoodare rhetorically invoked
because they have a disruptive connotation: they breach normative
bound-aries constructed around spatial criteria. It is not
acceptable that people from outside the neighbor-hood encroach on a
space whose assumed propriety is of local residents. Here,
neighborhood placebelonging traces a normative line of inclusion
and exclusion between publics who are entitled to agreater or
lesser degree to be in the Hole of Shame. As in extract 1,
neighbors have more territorialrights because they belong to the
place. In this case, urban-related identity (Lalli, 1992) becomes
adiscursive resource to draw a line between us and them (Clarke,
2008), warranting the exclusionof those lacking legitimate
place-belonging status (i.e., the Holes occupants). Moreover, the
placetransgression (Dixon et al., 2006) of the latter is
underpinned by their participation in squattingpractices (there are
occupied buildings), adding an unambiguous nuance of territorial
invasion tothe spatial context (Gifford, 1987).
Neighbors Spatial Entitlements Make Occupation ReasonableThe
Hole of Shames occupants themselves had to grapple with the
accusation of being external
agents or squatters, lacking urban-related identity. This
obliged them to warrant the polemic occu-pation of a public space
and to vindicate its legitimacy:
Extract 3M: We saw that theAyuntamiento was implementing the
same city model here, as in Born andLa Ribera, then the struggle
became concentrated in the Hole of Shame because it was theonly
remaining place where, where the neighbors identified there could
be a square, what wecall the plaza mayor of the neighborhood, yes?
The plaza mayor, a space for co-habitancewhere neighbors could
really, where the philosophy of space was a philosophy of
interactionamong the neighbors, where people could be at leisure,
where the elders would have a nursinghome, it could be an
intergenerational space for young people, children, elders, people
from
132 Di Masso
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different communities, you know? Then the struggle concentrated
on that. Then, by means ofa lot of popular pressure, three years
ago now, well, it was achieved.(Interview with the representative
of the occupants of the Hole of Shame).
In extract 3 the occupants representative warrants the reasons
why, and to what ends, the struggleand the spatial occupation took
place. The occupants discourse typically presented two
mainrhetorical components, which are illustrated in this extract.
First, speaking on behalf of theneighbors capitalized on the
cultural assumption that these local-scale citizens had the
territorialpropriety, as in extracts 1 and 2. In this case, the
Hole of Shame was occupied because the localinhabitants wanted a
square there: it was not the exclusionary will of illegitimate
outsiders, but thegeneral wish of neighborhood insiders.
Furthermore, it was not just any square but strictly a localone,
representing the image of the neighborhood plaza mayor, which in
Spanish towns is atraditional space for community mingling and
local diversity. Second, and most important, theappropriation of a
public space by its neighbors, still potentially controversial, is
warranted by anarrative of popular pressure in a struggle against
the city model insinuated by the developerin extract 1. In
depicting a reality of conflict involving threat to a successful
plaza mayor, theoccupant in extract 3 naturalizes (Thompson, 1990)
an attitude of spatial resistance and protectionfrom its supposed
users, the neighbors. Altogether, echoing a cultural narrative
(Haste, 2004) oflocal/neighborhood struggle against city/global
threat, the occupants warranted the spatial appro-priation also on
the grounds of the place identity of neighbors, but rhetorically
countering thedevelopers discourse.
The accounts so far discussed illustrate that the right to the
city is an aspect of citizenship statusparadoxically organized
around a series of unequal spatial entitlements based on
psychologicalcategories of place belonging. People lacking
neighborhood identity and territorial invaders (squat-ters) are the
kinds of out-of-place publics (Cresswell, 1996) with restricted
spatial rights, definitelydeserving less political attention than
neighbors/local inhabitants whenever plans for creating localpublic
spaces are discussed. The rhetorical uses of such psychological
categories (see also Edwards,1991) worked in the Hole of Shame
struggle warranting both the occupation of the space (extract 3)as
well as the eviction of occupants and its official development
(extracts 1 and 2).
Normative Representations of Spatial Behavior in Public
Discursive spatial entitlements deriving from place-belonging
criteria were not the only way oftracing normative boundaries
within the citizens right to the city. Along similar lines,
psychologicalrepresentations of the spatial behaviors expected in a
public space were drawn on in pursuingpartisan political
objectives. Thereby common sense images of citizens rights and
obligations werehighlighted through a language of spatial manners
and place-embedded behaviors. Extracts 4 to 6 inthe following
subsections illustrate this.
Citizens Right to Appropriate Public Space Has Limits
Extract 4Now [the space] its in a situation of impasse, an
abnormal impasse, from the point of viewof the citizen. For any
reason that one may or may not have, there is not a single
citizenallowed to appropriate a space, make it his own, grow his
own orchard there, or whateverhe wants. Its evident that the public
space is for everyone, and nobody can close it off andmake it his
own.(Interview with the representative of the developers).
133Grounding Citizenship
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Similar to extract 1, the developer in extract 4 reasserts that
the Hole of Shame is a problematicspace, defined here as an
abnormal impasse. The deviant character of this situation is
clearlydepicted as appealing for an indisputable right to public
space of every citizen, namely, universalfreedom of access and use
(Its evident that the public space is for everyone, and nobody can
closeit off and make it his own). Exclusionary actions of spatial
appropriation for restricted usecontravene this common sense
assumption in democratic societies, because it impedes other
citizenspracticing their equal right to free access in public
space. The Hole of Shame is hence depicted as aninadequate public
space because it does not meet this fundamental citizens right. As
an offensiverhetoric (Potter, 1996) undermining the neighborhood
plaza mayor construction portrayed by theoccupant back in extract
3, the developers argument quite clearly calls for the
redevelopment of theHole of Shame as an inadmissible public
space.
Note here that the developers account makes this freedom-of-use
assumption work rhetoricallybecause it evokes a contrary idea: that
freedom in public spaces is constrained by requirements ofcontrol
and by moral standards (Dixon et al., 2006). Added to their
disruptive presence as externalagents or squatters, occupants were
out of place also because their territorial behaviors breached
theessential meaning of public space: freedom of use and
appropriation must unfold only until it reachesthe limits of other
citizens rights and freedom. This underpins a dominant ideological
tradition ofnegative liberty in the public sphere, pinpointing that
freedom in public space depends less on accessand appropriation as
such than on the manners or ways these spatial rights are actually
exerted. Whenthe freedom of some involves the exclusion of others,
it becomes morally wrong and inadmissible(although, as many authors
have tenaciously underlined, this is in practice only the case when
theexcluded publics are the middle class, its hegemonically assumed
natural owners; e.g., see Boddy,1992; Crawford, 1995; Fraser, 1990;
Mitchell, 1995).
Normative/Deviant Scripts of Spatial Behavior in
PublicRhetorically opposed to the developers account in extract 4
above, the occupants discursive
strategies permanently aimed to justify the spatial
appropriation based on the assumption that localinhabitants
(neighbors) can spontaneously occupy a free urban allotment, if
deemed necessary,in order to struggle for a suitable public space.
Back in extract 3, the image of a plaza mayorachieved by means of a
struggle against a city model supported this idea. A veni-vidi-vici
logic forthe popular conquest of a loose urban space was assumed in
extract 3 to be a legitimate spatialbehavior. Framed as a political
action, the territorial behavior of appropriation of the Hole
(cen-sured by the developer in extract 4) appeared in the occupants
discourse as an acceptable strategyto counter the power and
authority of local institutions (Gifford, 1987; Merelman, 1988) and
toorganize political resistance (Jackson, 1998; Lees, 1998).
Moreover, the fact that the occupantsappropriated the only
remaining place in the neighborhood worked in extract 3 as an
extrema-tization (Potter, 1996), depicting the occupation as
stemming not from the occupants will, butfrom critical
circumstances of spatial availability. In discursive terms, this
protected the occupantsagainst stake accusations.
The do-it-yourself spatial strategy of territorial resistance
illustrated in extract 3 obviouslysubverts the dominant logical
order of urban development programs, according to which new
publicspaces are decided, programmed, and supervised by the
political authorities. Extract 5 belowrepresents this institutional
stance:
Extract 5I: The space of Figueras Well has become an unresolved
issue that has continued for morethan four years. What is the
situation? Is there a working line yet in order to resolve
theconflict?
134 Di Masso
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CM: The demolitions are already finished; the participatory
process to determine thedevelopment has started now. I guess that
itll be finished in a couple of months and then theworks will
start. Before the end of 2006 itll be completely arranged.
I: What will be put there?
CM: We dont know it yet. The development will consider issues
related to a green, aplay-area for ptanque, basketball, games for
children, public toilets, in sum, all thosethings that can be
placed in a public space, depending on what is finally decided in
thisparticipatory process.(Interview with the District Councillor
20032007, published in the newspaper Nova CiutatVella, November
2005)
In this extract, the District Councillor exemplifies the correct
and appropriate ways of solving thedevelopment of a public space in
normal democracies. His account is rhetorically designed as
aspace-based script formulation (Edwards, 1994; Stokoe &
Wallwork, 2003). First, buildings areknocked down; then a
participatory plan takes place; and finally urban furniture is
introduced into thenew environment. In this sequential narrative,
any popular will is accepted (depending on what isfinally decided
in this participatory process), but after that the process is over
and the politicalauthority decides a definitive solution.
Scripts allow resetting a familiar normative baseline where
exceptional disorderliness rules. Indiscursive terms, the District
Councillors scripted account constructs an image of
institutionalcontrol that is challenged by the interviewer, who
refers to an unresolved conflict. The Hole ofShame situation
defied, as in the developers discourse, a dominant arrangement of
the sociospatialorder in the city that presupposes institutional
monitoring of public space making and does certainlynot include
direct spatial appropriation. The right to the city is in this case
limited by institutionalauthority upon alternative enactments of
citizenship based on direct spatial appropriation (i.e.,
theoccupants strategy, extract 3).
Citizens Moral-Spatial Manners in PublicImages of social
disorderliness in the Hole of Shame were also discursively
constructed using
a morally loaded language of spatial bad manners, foregrounding
and performing citizenship iden-tities and entitlements. Extract 6
below presents the account of a previous District
Councillorregarding the origin of the Hole of Shames occupation.
The core idea of the District Councillorsaccount is that of a
general situation of anomie in the Hole of Shame, and in the
neighborhoodgenerally, during her mandate:
Extract 6C: He [name of a local inhabitant] began to go mad, and
started to call groups of squatters,who had never considered living
around there, come here, come here, there is an empty flathere!,
and he called any social conflict group, conflict, huh? civic
conflict, squatters,Algerians, I remember a documentary on
television, the rooftops of that environment betternot to, they
were jumping from one roof to another, so, they entered one
building, came outthree buildings further along, buildings that
were already evicted waiting to be knockeddown (. . .) The Algerian
delinquent who did whatever he wanted and nobody controlled,because
among other things their meeting point was Carders with
Allada-Vermell, thosepiles were, the arch of, that was, I mean like
their playground, I mean, they lived there, theylived there for as
many hours as they were interested.(Interview with the District
Councillor 19992003)
135Grounding Citizenship
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In this account squatters are again mentioned. As said in the
first subsection of the analysis, theyare invoked as an
intrinsically out-of-place category of people whose transgressive
identity signifiesthe occupied space in negative terms. The arrival
of squatters disrupted the spatial order because theywere
considered by the Councillor as a civic conflict group. Civic
conflict is depicted using alocational sequence: a man incited
conflict groups to come here, offered them empty flats,ultimately
putting them there. This is certainly not a conventional way for
people to move from oneplace to another. There seems to be a breach
of an implicit normative sequence that structures the waypeople
should move to a place, again a culture-bound scripted sequence.
People are normally expectedto choose where they go, they do not
usually occupy flats just because they are empty, and they are
notput there by the first person who calls upon them (especially if
the instigator is a mad man).Altogether, the Councillors account
depicts a general situation of urban disorder in the Hole of
Shameinvolving illegitimate publics moving beyond the thresholds of
correct displacement behaviors.
The Councillor focuses the rest of her account on a particular
group of people, the Algerians,who at that time represented an
important group of newcomers. Algerians are discursively
alignedwith squatters as a civic conflict group occupying empty
flats. Therefore, Algerians appear as a socialcategory of publics
with various outsider conditions in the Councillors discourse: they
are depictedas foreigners, squatters, urban troublemakers and
criminals (Algerian delinquent, nobody carriedany kind of document,
caught by the police). This makes the attribution of civic conflict
in theHole of Shame quite evident, discursively constructing the
negative identity of its users as problem-atic citizens.
More interestingly, the Algerians negative identity is
rhetorically worked through by reportingtheir ways of being in and
moving around the Hole of Shame: they were jumping from one roof
toanother; they entered one building, came out of another three
buildings further along; theirmeeting point was Carders with
Allada-Vermell,3 it was like their playground, and they lived
therefor as long as they were interested. The rhetorical value of
these descriptions lies in the nature of thesespatial uses also as
instances of place transgression. Jumping over the rooftops, coming
in and out ofthe buildings, and appropriating a public space as a
playground for permanent use is not commonlyconsidered a correct
behavior. Common sense dictates that rooftops, buildings, and
street corners aremeant to be used differently to be proper spatial
practices. The spatial uses reported by the Councillorclearly
constitute deviant behaviors as they breach the normative
definition of roof use, buildingentrance, and street gathering.
Connoting bad manners in public, the capacity of spatial notions
toregulate normative social relationships by virtue of their moral
significance is confirmed (Stokoe &Wallwork, 2003). Our culture
affords citizens much more decent and correct ways of moving
throughurban space. The Councillors depiction of a moral panic
(Cohen, 2002) comes to the fore as anintense negative feeling
caused by inadmissible spatial behaviors in public disrupting the
social order.
Also, the Councillors account highlights a public/private
distinction when she asserts that thesecriminalized immigrants
lived there for as many hours as they were interested. This
argumentunderpins the status of these people as inadmissible
publics on the basis of an added place-and-timetransgression,
namely, that public space is public and (as the developer puts it
in extract 4) nobodycan use it as if it were a private space.
Living in a public space is clearly an inappropriate
behavior.Exclusive propriety and unceasing occupation are certainly
adequate at home but not in the openspace of the city. Therefore,
occupants were also breaching the moral order of public space by
usingit as a private space, impeding access for other citizens.
On the whole, the accounts of the developer and of the two
successive District Councillorssupport a stance that defends a
version of the sociospatial public order requiring the absence
ofcertain categories of people. People external to the
neighborhood, squatters, and Algerians were notentitled to be in
the Hole of Shame because they essentially impeded the exercise of
common civic
3 Eastern border of the area comprised by the Hole of Shame.
136 Di Masso
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rights and freedoms by neighbors (extract 2) and by all citizens
(extract 4); they disruptedinstitutional protocols of the citys
spatial transformation (extract 5); and they breached the
publicspaces moral-spatial organization (extract 6). If aptitude
for citizenship (is) premised on a mode ofcivility, or on how to
behave within the public spaces of the polis (Kofman, 1995, p.
123), thenclearly the accounts discussed in this section confer
less citizenship aptitude on certain (counter)publics who are
perceived as not belonging to the normal public space. This
rhetoric narrows thelegitimacy of occupancy in the public sphere
(Barnes et al., 2004), compromises particular socialidentities in
public (Painter & Philo, 1995), and draws a line of exclusion
(Clarke, 2008) within thepsychological field of citizenship.
Matter Matters: The Physical Grounds of Citizenship
Up to this point, the Hole of Shames analysis could easily lead
to the conclusion that the spatialdispute was only bound by the
limits of discourse. The rhetorical dispute mobilized a series
ofspace-related constructions redefining normative boundaries of
citizenship status. However, space-discourses framed, and were
framed by, material actions of spatial appropriation, use, and
transfor-mation that were also consequential in terms of
psychological belonging to the legitimate categoryof citizenship.
Discourse and space were mutually enmeshed in ways that redefined
the ideationalfield of placeness, the physical grounds of
spatiality, and the political contours of citizenship.
This assertion makes explicit an epistemological tension that
inevitably arises when approachingthe relationship between the
symbolic, the discursive, and the material dimensions of the
urbangeography (e.g., see Duncan, 1993; Hastings, 1999; Latham
& McCormack, 2004; Lees, 2004).Being aware of (but not
overcoming) this tension, the discursive analysis of the Hole of
Shameconflict would be somehow incomplete if it ignored that
geographically located tangible objects andbodies that moved in
space and time structurally embodied the daily practices of
citizenship enactedin the Hole of Shame. Recurrent sequences of
spatial occupation-and-eviction composed the physicalsetting in
which public space discourse redrew the boundaries of social
belonging, urban identity,and civic entitlements that shape citizen
status.
Consider the following example of spatial events reflecting what
actually happened inside theplace, related to rhetorically opposing
discursive framings. In extract 4 the spokesman of thedevelopers
argued that the space is in a situation of abnormal impasse, from
the point of view ofthe citizen, because there is not a single
citizen allowed to appropriate a space, since its evidentthat the
public space is for everyone and nobody can close it off and make
it his own. This normativelimit of citizens right to appropriate
the public space led in practice to successive physical actionsby
the local authorities. Trees planted by the local inhabitants were
removed, there was policerepression, municipal workers built a
defensive wall, and policemen finally evicted the occupants
toredevelop a new official public space. These actions materially
embodied the developers citizenshipdiscourse which warranted, in
different moments of the conflict, imminent reappropriation of
thespace by the local administration and consequent eviction.
The occupants rhetorical contestation was also consequential in
terms of embodied practices ofspatial resistance. Recalling extract
3, the spokesman of the occupants argued that the strugglebecame
concentrated in the Hole of Shame because it was the only remaining
place where theneighbors identified there could be a square; for
this reason, by means of a lot of popular pressureagainst a city
model, the space was occupied. This discourse constructed a version
of the right tothe city based on citizens struggle and direct
appropriation, undermining the normative limits tracedby the
developers (extract 4). In this frame, the occupants rhetoric was
followed by local inhabitantsreplanting trees, holding hands around
buildings in order to impede their demolition and knockingdown the
wall erected by the municipal workers. If the developers rhetoric
was spatially entrenched
137Grounding Citizenship
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by eviction, territorial marking, and surveillance, the
occupants arguments became embodied inreappropriation and
territorial defense.
From this example one does not need to conclude that there is an
objective extra-discursiverealm out there in the form of spatial
geography that determines place discourse. Rather, itpinpoints
innovative approaches to the relationship between the physical
space and place discourseneed to be developed, especially when
analyses of citizenship practices are grounded in public space.In
this sense, together with embodiment (in material objects and
environmentally embedded inter-group behavior) and territorial
behaviors (appropriation, marking, control, defense, power,
andresistance), place indexicality (the reference to the social
meanings of the material placement ofsigns; Scollon & Scollon,
2003, p. 4) can be a helpful concept. This implies that some
languagepractices and physical markers only make sense when they
are materially placed in specific areas andpointing in different
directions. This unavoidable dimension of whereness in the
discursiveproduction of citizenship status was also clear in the
Holes conflict. Graffiti stating that the TownCouncil was
neglecting the needs of the local inhabitants, banners demanding a
green zone, andverbal accusations against urban developers walking
around the area, only made sense insofar as theywere displayed
strictly within the spatial limits of the Hole of Shame. Out of
this area these signswould have lost their political meaning and
would have been as out of place as the occupants in theview of
politicians and of the rest of the neighborhood. Words demanding a
plaza mayor againsta city model and a space for everybody (extract
3) had their logical emplacement in the publicarena of the Hole of
Shame.
By the same token, spatial movements in the Hole of Shame had
territorial connotations.Territorial behavior was the only means by
which the occupants felt that they could protest over aperceived
grievance stemming from an unwanted urban development program
(Gifford, 1987).Physical occupation and direct aggression appeared
because the activities desired for in the samespace were
incompatible among different segments of citizens. Mitchells (1995,
2003) apology oftaking to the streets in order to claim for all
citizens right to the city fits in with this territorialbehavior,
which was also a political resource for the local administration in
the struggle to regainauthority (Merelman, 1988). The Hole of Shame
conflict confirmed that territoriality is embeddedin social
relations (Sack, 1986, p. 26), regulating intergroup behavior
between different sectors ofthe citizenship in their competing
attempts of asserting their right to public space. Through
spatialactions the occupants in the Hole of Shame gained visibility
in the public sphere, eventually leadingto positive recognition of
their undervalued social identities and to legitimization of their
neighbor-hood problems. Spatial actions became an instrument to
express perception of inequity and topromote community empowerment,
supporting processes of place-attachment via collective narra-tives
of political involvement (Low, 1992).
Conclusion
Positive recognition and acceptance in the public sphere are
core aspects of legitimacy shapingcitizenship status. This becomes
especially clear in public places, i.e., citizenships spatial
grounds.Public spaces can be conceived as the natural arena for the
enactment of the right to the city, afundamental citizens right to
freely access, use, appropriate, and transform the urban space. It
hasbeen argued in this article that public space claims, demands,
and conflicts may bring to the forecitizenship concerns,
particularly contested matters which are both psychologically
grounded andpolitically consequential.
The analysis of accounts involved in a sociospatial conflict in
Barcelona has illustrated thatcontested constructions of the
citizen can underlie psychological representations of public
space.Although one single case study is obviously insufficient to
draw a global conclusion on the politicalsignificance of such
psychological representations, it is however useful to shed light
on some
138 Di Masso
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important social-psychological processes that can shape
experiences of citizenship located in thepublic space.
Specifically, it has been shown that psychological assumptions
about membership to aspace-bound community, normative boundaries
limiting spatial appropriation rights, and morallyconnoted spatial
behaviors in public can be related to varied profiles of
citizenship with differentiatedlevels of legitimacy.
The case study discussed also shows the validity of a
discursive-rhetorical approach to broachthis link between
psychological representations of behavior in public and related
conceptions ofcitizenship. Public space discourse can be functional
to warrant, as well as undermine, competingsociospatial claims and
actions in the public realm that have political resonances. The
analysis allowsstating that the discursive uses of place belonging
and of normative views of spatial use andappropriation can underpin
different versions of citizenship identity and status. Moreover,
they canbe at the service of justifying conflicting physical
enactments of the right to the city and opposedconceptions of the
social order.
At a conceptual level, the case analyzed is deemed useful to
continue exploring what has beenreferred to as the micropolitics of
everyday constructions of space and place (Hopkins &
Dixon,2006). The article has aimed to bring into focus citizenship
within psychological studies of publicspace, as well as to
introduce public space matters into psychological studies of
citizenship. As aresult, it has been shown how some psychological
understandings of citizenship can also be workedthrough public
space constructions driven by politically contested conceptions of
the right to the city(Mitchell, 2003).
Also, the article considers that territorial conflicts in public
space can eventually becomematerial versions of symbolic struggles
to redefine the psychological boundaries of normativebelonging to
citizenship: as a way of reshaping the political ontology of a
citizen whose identity isgrounded on the public space. Territorial
behaviors in public space can serve to reassert and
censureurban-related identities (e.g., neighbors/local inhabitants,
squatters, etc.; Lalli, 1992) and to regulateintergroup relations
between publics and counterpublics (Crawford, 1995; Fraser, 1990).
It has beenargued that considering some physical dimensions of
public space enriches psychological under-standings of citizenship
because they frame the sense of their embedded discourses, serving
as aresource to make visible the identities of social groups and
embody the symbolic lines of socialacceptance and censure that
construct citizenship as a sociospatial relation.
The study is deemed useful to discuss universal freedom of
access to the public space as a basicaspect of citizenship. This
normative ideal can be challenged in practice by urban strategies
per-ceived to be exclusionary (Smith, 1996; Sorkin, 1992), as well
as by counterpublics tenaciouslyasserting their right to the city
via direct appropriation and permanent occupation (Mitchell,
1995;Staeheli & Thompson, 1997). In this sense, the analysis of
the Hole of Shame conflict supportsShotters (1993) statement that
citizenship is a status that one must struggle to attain, also
spatially.
However, this single case study has its limitations outside its
contextual validity and its instru-mental value. While it serves to
illustrate possible significant relationships between public space
andcitizenship at a social-psychological level, pinpointing how
citizenship is also materially staged inthe city space, its
conclusions do not apply to all sorts of public spaces everywhere.
For instance,cultural differences may lead to a variety of
normative meanings and expectations regarding citizensbehavior in
public, as much as particular trends of urban development can
afford the citizensparticular uses of public space tied to
different understandings of its nature and functions. Discoursesand
spatial practices are expected to construct citizenship, public
space, and their interrelatedprocesses in many different ways.
In the context of this study, these conclusions point towards a
model of citizenship based on apolitics of difference, recognition,
and contestation in the public space, rather than of
sameness,unity, and peaceful consensus. Being both politically and
psychologically relevant, citizenshipinterventions grounded on the
public space would benefit from working on the differential
entitle-
139Grounding Citizenship
-
ments to use public space that depend on controversial
place-belonging criteria; the normative limitsof citizens universal
access to, and appropriation of, the public space, considering
their contestednature and ways of re-negotiating these limits;
citizens conflicting views of how transformations ofthe public
space should take place; and the different systems of values that
shape moral-spatialassumptions defining decent and inadmissible
behavior in public.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Andrs
Di Masso, Social PsychologyDepartment, University of Barcelona, Pg.
Vall dHebron, 171, 08035, Barcelona, Spain.
E-mail:[email protected]
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