Doing the City from the Margins: Critical Perspectives on Urban Marginality*

ABSTRACT

This special issue focuses on urban marginality in diverse contexts across the world (Africa, Latin America, Arab States and Europe) and proposes anthropological perspectives on contemporary urbanity that take into account the complexity of the social positions of those city dwellers that are on the margins. Three aspects of urban margins come to the fore. First, urbanites respond to increasing marginalisation through the production of alternative meanings and narratives about the city. While grand, powerful narratives may present cities as ‘divided’, ‘dual’ or ‘conflicted’, urban dwellers may carve out symbolic space through discourses of the non-spectacular and non-political, emerging out of lived space. Second, the cuts and frictions constituting urban margins do not only limit urban dwellers capacities, but can also provide spaces of agentic possibilities. As it is well known, the absence of state control can be turned by versatile urbanites into opportunities of the ‘informal’ economy. Third, urban dwellers engage in manifold practices that connect and entangle their marginalised position with spaces of power and resources. Through their practices urban margins become a relation to, not a disconnection from the ‘centre’. In this special issue we understand ‘urban margins’ not as essence or entities, but as forms of relations between urban dwellers shaped by processes of political, economic, spatial and social marginalisation. Seen in this way, urban margins constitute a perspective on the urban: a lens to entice comparisons of urban agency in the world of cities [Robinson, J. 2011. “Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35 (1): 1–23. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.00982.x]].     

Planning continuity and the actual conditions of shopping malls

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the continuity of the planning of shopping malls in downtown areas of Japan and to look into the tendencies of the current existing malls until today. This paper is a summary of a survey conducted on the actual conditions of current shopping malls and a questionnaire administered to local governments in the survey areas. The results of this study allow us to summarize the reasons for and changes caused by renewal efforts directed toward the streets, public spaces, and urban elements (pavement, bench, streetlight, arcade, sculpture, etc.) in shopping malls. Furthermore, these results also help us to understand the scale of the renewal efforts as well as their timing in relation to when the shopping mall was originally constructed.     

Risk of Intestinal Parasitic Infections in People with Different Exposures to Wastewater and Fecal Sludge in Kampala,Uganda: A Cross-Sectional Study

BackgroundThere are health risks associated with wastewater and fecal sludge management and use, but little is known about the magnitude, particularly in rapidly growing urban settings of low- and middle-income countries. We assessed the point-prevalence and risk factors of intestinal parasite infections in people with different exposures to wastewater and fecal sludge in Kampala, Uganda.MethodologyA cross-sectional survey was carried out in September and October 2013, enrolling 915 adults from five distinct population groups: workers maintaining wastewater facilities; workers managing fecal sludge; urban farmers; slum dwellers at risk of flooding; and slum dwellers without risk of flooding. Stool samples were subjected to the Kato-Katz method and a formalin-ether concentration technique for the diagnosis of helminth and intestinal protozoa infections. A questionnaire was administered to determine self-reported signs and symptoms, and risk factors for intestinal parasite infections. Univariate and multivariate analyses, adjusted for sex, age, education, socioeconomic status, water, sanitation, and hygiene behaviors, were conducted to estimate the risk of infection with intestinal parasites and self-reported health outcomes, stratified by population group.Conclusions/SignificanceUrban farmers are particularly vulnerable to infections with soil-transmitted helminths, S. mansoni, and intestinal protozoa. Hence, our findings call for public health protection measures for urban farmers and marginalized communities, going hand-in-hand with integrated sanitation safety planning at city level.     

Making the Global City: Urban Citizenship at the Margins of Delhi

There is a growing scholarly interest in the spatialisation of class relations in post-industrial cities. Gentrified suburbs exclude the poor and re-work notions of public property and urban citizenship to the advantage of the rich. My study moves beyond the sanitised places of the inner city and shows how the cleaning mission affects life in the new spaces of deprivation. I analyse home making in a resettlement colony of Delhi. After being removed from the hubs of the labour market and with little state support, resettled slum dwellers struggle under harsh conditions for survival. Those who can afford this expensive venture embrace home ownership at high personal risks und by exploiting the channels of the informal economy, hoping that possessing a legal dwelling will root them more firmly in the city. In practice, the new status is an often uneasy fusion of a formal and informal status and thus remains essentially precarious in an environment that criminalises informality.     

Whiteness and loss in outer East London: tracing the collective memories of diaspora space

Abstract

This paper explores collective memory in Newham, East London. It addresses how remembering East London as the home of whiteness and traditional forms of community entails powerful forms of forgetting. Newham's formation through migration – its ‘great time’ – has ensured that myths of indigeneity and whiteness have never stood still. Through engaging with young people's and youth workers' memory practices, the paper explores how phantasms of whiteness and class loss are traced over, and how this tracing reveals ambivalence and porosity, at the same time as it highlights the continued allure of race. It explores how whiteness and class loss are appropriated across ethnic boundaries and how they are mobilized to produce new forms of racial hierarchy in a ‘super-diverse’ place.     

Crimes Against Nature: Kincest,Cosmology, and Conservation in Southwest China

ABSTRACT

The post-Mao era (1976–present) has seen a number of great changes in China. Two of these – the revival of religion and the emergence of a nascent, but powerful environmental movement – have come together in a unique way in the revitalisation of dongba religion among the Naxi nationality (pop. 300,000) of northwest Yunnan and southwest Sichuan provinces. This paper examines the relations between indigenous Naxi and outside tourists (mainly Han from other parts of China) through multiple lenses, including traditional Naxi cosmologies and theories of kinship and hospitality, as well as contemporary ideas concerning tourism development and environmental protection. The aim is to show that: (1) Naxi theories of alterity occur at multiple levels simultaneously – gods/demons vs. humans, kin vs. non-kin, native vs. stranger, host vs. guest, etc. – but that a unified logic underlies the relations, transactions, and interpenetration of these groups and (2) this logic is a productive force in its own right, that is, capable of harnessing new situations to it, even as it itself evolves as novel meanings are engendered in the process of intentional action. In all of this, one figure stands out: the dongba, a traditional shaman-priest viewed as a kind of mediator or facilitator in interactions and exchanges involving a wide range of human and non-human subjects.     

Towards a tuwün wariache? Place-making and creative acts of traversing in the Mapuche city

This article addresses experiences of belonging and place-making among indigenous Mapuche youths in Santiago, Chile. Moving from a collaborative ethnography, it elaborates on the emplacement of the tuwün (place of origin) – usually linked to ancestral territories – within the city, and the meanings this shift entails. Furthering knowledge on indigenous spatiality by addressing migration, the analysis focuses on the ambivalent ways in which memory, affect, and power relations are embedded in urban materialities, and are negotiated through ‘acts of traversing’. The significant relationship between persons and places is conceived as mediated by movement, expanding on the creative possibilities of routing. Moreover, drawing on practice-based methods, the article argues for a shared engagement with research participants in order to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which place- and self-making in contexts of migration encompass both rupture and creative reappropriation, contributing to current debates on displacement and the sense of place.     

Some Characteristics of the People who Attend Mexican Rooster (Cock) Fighting Events

ABSTRACT

Participants were profiled at one of the two largest cockfighting events in Mexico. In general, the participants were mainly rural and small town dwellers; were married with children. They involved their family and friends in their sport, have middle and lower middle class vocations, have a better educational background and income than the population at large, and belong to the major religious faith. Unlike in the U.S., in Mexican cockfighting i) alcohol consumption, and ii) singers appear as part of the attraction.     

Shifting Urban Margins: Accessing Unequal Spaces of Ageing and Care in Zanzibar and Muscat

ABSTRACT

Older people constitute a growing proportion of the urban population and are encountered in all kinds of spaces and neighbourhoods across cities. This article argues that urban seniority and elderly care are a fruitful, new lens to study how inhabitants on the social margins create urban space and social cohesion. This article draws on ethnographic research in the cities of Zanzibar, Tanzania, and Muscat, the capital of Oman. Many older inhabitants of cities experience frailty, serious health problems, or even disabilities and are no longer able to work or make a living, which pushes them towards the social margins. The ethnographic examples and reflections in this article illustrate, first, how cities can be investigated from the perspective of social and spatial marginality. Second, they show how urban dwellers’ social positions can shift between the margins and centres of an urban society depending on their health and access to unequal spaces of ageing and care. And third, the paper analyses how some elders respond to marginality by taking up transnational and cosmopolitan agency.     

Quantifying the Trade in Cycads (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Encephalartos</Emphasis> Species) in the Traditional Medicine Markets of Johannesburg and Durban,South Africa<Superscript>1</Superscript>

Quantifying the Trade in Cycads ( Encephalartos Species) in the Traditional Medicine Markets of Johannesburg and Durban, South Africa. Cycads have been used for traditional purposes for centuries, mainly as a source of starch during droughts and famines. In South Africa, Encephalartos species are traded for traditional medicine (TM) in local TM markets. The 2009 IUCN Red Data assessment for South African flora lists 78% of the 37 indigenous Encephalartos species as “Threatened”, with three species already “Extinct in the Wild” (EW). South African cycads face an extinction crisis, primarily due to collecting for the horticultural trade. The trade in Encephalartos for TM also has a significant impact on several species, and is largely understudied. In this paper, the trade in Encephalartos for TM was quantified in South Africa’s two largest TM markets, Faraday in Johannesburg and Warwick in Durban. Harvesting of South African Encephalartos for TM involves the removal of bark strips and/or whole stem sections. Encephalartos species were sold at 26% and 13% of the stalls at Faraday and Warwick, respectively, with an estimated 9.0 metric tons traded at Warwick in 2009. Stem samples purchased in the markets were assigned to stem diameter size classes using a size class chart, and regression analysis was used to validate the allocations. Most harvesting was from sub-adult and adult cycads, and it appears that bark strips are removed from large arborescent plants, whereas smaller individuals and subterranean-stemmed species are harvested by removing the entire plant. There is generally a positive relationship between stem diameter and leaf base length as well as stem diameter and pith radius. The former can be used as a predictor of stem diameter size class for market samples that prove difficult to assign to diameter classes using the chart. Overall, this is the first study to quantify the trade in Encephalartos for TM in South Africa with reference to the size classes of the plants traded.     

The Politics of Governance and Urban Marginality: A Camp Studies Perspective

ABSTRACT

Designed to provide temporary shelter to the displaced, in protracted refugee situations camps become places of long-term residency and undergo processes of urban change. The complex realities of protracted encampment challenge the dichotomy between the city (as a norm) and the camp (as an exception) that underpins dominant theoretical models of refugee camps. Instead, the theoretical lens of urban margins allows us to circumvent this binary and analyse the camps from the perspective of their relation to the city and the state. Rather than a specific location, this article approaches urban marginality as a condition produced by unequal power relations behind the enforcement of a particular urban order. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork, it draws on the case of Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank. Unlike the majority of studies on Palestinian camps that focus either on top-down politics of exclusion or political agency of camp residents, the article examines how different actors, interests and modes of exercising power (both formal and informal) intersect in camp space and produce, as well as resist and subvert, the condition of urban marginality.     

Humans and Wild Animals in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Texts: Interactions and Metaphors

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the relations between humans and wild animals in the lands of the Bible and ancient Near East and the way in which these cultures used various creatures and their characteristics as metaphors for dangerous enemies. It focuses on three particular periods in which the sources at our disposal document human–wild animal interactions. The first section discusses the emergence of civilization in Mesopotamia as reflected in various texts, discussing their portrait of the epoch in which human culture took shape and domesticated animals began to be clearly differentiated from wild ones. The second part looks at human–canine relations—wild dogs and their domesticated counterparts—briefly surveying how the former serve as metaphors for enemies beyond inhabited regions as evinced in the Egyptian El-Amarna archive. The third section analyzes the human–animal relations portrayed in the biblical texts, reviewing the theological principles they adopt in relation to the animal kingdom and the way in which wild animals became a metaphor for both wicked adversaries and striking physical attributes.     

Duration of ovarian hormone exposure and gynecological cancer risk in Korean women: the Korean Heart Study

BackgroundAlthough reproductive and hormonal factors – such as early menarche and late menopause – have been reported as independent risk factors for cancer, few studies have examined these factors in East Asian populations.MethodsWe performed a large prospective cohort study of 66,466 women. Ovarian hormone exposure was defined as length of time between menarche and menopause. Incidence rates for breast, ovarian, endometrial and cervical cancers were examined separately in relation to reproductive lifespan defined as age at menopause minus age at menarche. Multivariable adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were calculated using the Cox proportional hazards model.ResultsWomen with early menarche were at increased risk for developing breast cancer (HR, 1.57, 95% CI, 1.17–2.10) for age at menarche ≤12 years compared to women with age at menarche ≥17 years. Women with late age at menopause (≥52 years) had increased risks for cancers of the breast (HR, 1.59, 95%CI, 1.11–2.28) and ovary (HR, 3.22, 95% CI, 1.09–9.55) compared to women with early menopause (≤45 years of age). Women with longer duration of ovarian hormone exposure (≥40 years) were at increased risk for developing breast cancer (HR, 2.23, 95% CI, 1.35–3.68) as well as endometrial cancer (p for trend, 0.0209).ConclusionsWe showed that longer reproductive spans are associated with an increased risk of breast and endometrial cancer in Korean women.     

Emplacing Christ: An Indigenous Australian Ethics of Placemaking Across Borders

ABSTRACT

Travelling from my old heimat, Germany, I joined in September 2015 a group of Anangu Pitjantjatjara Bible translators on a two-week long pilgrimage to the Holy Land. This journey offered further probing into Anangu attachments to place that, until then, I had only known through ethnographic research in their desert homelands in northern South Australia. In the present article, I explore how and why the Anangu Christians forged links with biblically inscribed places to which they had no ancestral ties. What they did bring is a deep-seated sense of emotional connection with Jesus abiding in heaven, and here the pilgrimage was a chance to anchor this relationship in his land – to emplace Christ. Notable in this process of shifting the presence of Jesus from heaven to earth was the pilgrims’ moral concern to keep separate the emplaced stories of their ancestral lands on one hand, and the grounded narratives of the Christian Scriptures on the other. In Jonathan Mair and Nicholas Evans’ terms, their approach was one of ‘incommensuration’, a strategy to avoid moral conflict by refusing to make comparisons between religious traditions. My article may thus be read as an ethnographic contribution towards the understanding of an Australian Indigenous ethics of placemaking across borders.     

Global Morbidity and Mortality of Leptospirosis: A Systematic Review

BackgroundLeptospirosis, a spirochaetal zoonosis, occurs in diverse epidemiological settings and affects vulnerable populations, such as rural subsistence farmers and urban slum dwellers. Although leptospirosis is a life-threatening disease and recognized as an important cause of pulmonary haemorrhage syndrome, the lack of global estimates for morbidity and mortality has contributed to its neglected disease status.Conclusions/SignificanceLeptospirosis is among the leading zoonotic causes of morbidity worldwide and accounts for numbers of deaths, which approach or exceed those for other causes of haemorrhagic fever. Highest morbidity and mortality were estimated to occur in resource-poor countries, which include regions where the burden of leptospirosis has been underappreciated.     

Lymph flow guided irradiation of regional lymph nodes in patients with cervical cancer: Preliminary analysis of scintigraphic data

PurposeTo evaluate patterns of lymph flow from primary lesions in patients with cervical cancer and to determine how useful for radiotherapy planning this information can be.Materials and methodsSPECT–CT visualization of sentinel (SLN) lymph nodes (LNs) was performed in 36 primary patients with IB-IIB cervical cancer. The acquisition started 120–240 min after 4 peritumoral injections of 99mTc-radiocolloids (150–300 MBq in 0.4–1 ml). We determined localization of LN with uptake of radiocolloids, type of lymph flow (mono-, bi-lateral) and lymph flow patterns (supraureteral paracervical, infraureteral paracervical and directly to para-aortic LNs).ResultsSLNs were visualized in 31 of 36 women. Bilateral lymph-flow was detected in 22 (71%), monolateral – in the other 9 (29%) cases. The distribution of SLNs was as follows: external iliac – 64.5%, internal iliac – 54.8%, obturator – 32.2%, common iliac – 35.5% and pre-sacral 3.2%. Para-aortic LNs were visualized in 5 (16.1%) patients. The supraureteral paracervical pattern of lymph flow was identified in 22, infraureteral paracervical – in 4 and their combination – in the other 5 women.ConclusionVisualization of an individual pattern of lymph flow from primary cervical cancer can be considered as a promising tool for optimization of the volume of irradiated regional LNs.     

Book review of Littler DM. Littler MM (2000) Caribbean Reef Plants An Identification Guide to the Reef Plants of the Caribbean,Bahamas, Florida and Gulf of Mexico

Information on spatial variability and distribution patterns of organisms in coral reef environments is necessary to evaluate the increasing anthropogenic disturbance of marine environments (Richmond 1993; Wilkinson 1993; Dayton 1994). Therefore different types of subtidal, reef-associated hard substrata (reef flats, reef slopes, coral carpets, coral patches, rock grounds), each with different coral associations, were investigated to determine the distribution pattern of molluscs and their life habits (feeding strategies and substrate relations). The molluscs were strongly dominated by taxa with distinct relations to corals, and five assemblages were differentiated. The Dendropoma maxima assemblage on reef flats is a discrete entity, strongly dominated by this encrusting and suspension-feeding gastropod. All other assemblages are arranged along a substrate gradient of changing coral associations and potential molluscan habitats. The Coralliophila neritoidea–Barbatia foliata assemblage depends on the presence of Porites and shows a dominance of gastropods feeding on corals and of bivalves associated with living corals. The Chamoidea–Cerithium spp. assemblage on rock grounds is strongly dominated by encrusting bivalves. The Drupella cornus–Pteriidae assemblage occurs on Millepora–Acropora reef slopes and is strongly dominated by bivalves associated with living corals. The Barbatia setigera–Ctenoides annulata assemblage includes a broad variety of taxa, molluscan life habits and bottom types, but occurs mainly on faviid carpets and is transitional among the other three assemblages. A predicted degradation of coral coverage to rock bottoms due to increasing eutrophication and physical damage in the study area (Riegl and Piller 2000) will result in a loss of coral-associated molluscs in favor of bivalve crevice dwellers in dead coral heads and of encrusters on dead hard substrata.     

Effect of nest-site microclimatic conditions on nesting success in the Lesser Kestrel Falco naumanni

Capsule: Microclimatic conditions in the nests of the Lesser Kestrel Falco naumanni, particularly the percentage of time of extremely low humidity, affect breeding success.

Aim: To study the effect of within-nest temperature and humidity on nest productivity, and the correlation between nest productivity and the order of dates on which nests were occupied by the parents. To compare microclimatic conditions in the nest, breeding success and order of occupation between nests under tile roofs and in artificial nest boxes.

Methods: Three different Lesser Kestrel colonies were monitored in Israel – one rural, one urban and one in an open country habitat. Data loggers were placed in 39 nests for the entire breeding period to measure temperature and humidity. The number of fledglings was recorded for each nest, as well as the date of occupation.

Results: Full microclimatic data from 35 nests suggest that percentage of time of extremely low humidity is the major predictor of nest productivity – low humidity is negatively correlated with nest productivity. Sites of more successful nests were occupied earlier. Considering only successful nests, the urban colony had the lowest breeding success of the three colonies. There was no significant difference in mean productivity between nests in roofs and nest boxes, but nests in roofs were occupied earlier.

Conclusion: Nest microclimate, particularly low humidity, affects nesting success in addition to colony location.     

Increased interleukin-10 levels correlate with bacteremia and sepsis in febrile neutropenia pediatric oncology patients

BackgroundEarly diagnosis of bacteremia and sepsis in pediatric oncology patients with febrile neutropenia still remains unresolved task due to lack of sensitive and specific laboratory markers particularly at the beginning of the infectious process. The objective of our study was to assess the potentiality of interleukin-10 (IL-10) to predict or exclude bacteremia or sepsis at the beginning of febrile episode in childhood oncology patients.MethodsA total of 36 febrile neutropenic episodes in 24 children were studied. Serum samples were collected after confirmation of febrile neutropenia and analyzed using automated random access analyzer.ResultsThe sensitivity of IL-10 was 73% and specificity – 92% (cut-off = 18 pg/ml, area under the curve – 0.87, 95% CI for sensitivity 39–94%, 95% CI for specificity 74–99%) with negative predictive value (NPV) – 83%.ConclusionsIL-10 evaluation might be used as an additional diagnostic tool for clinicians in excluding bacteremia or clinical sepsis in oncology patients with febrile neutropenia because of high NPV and specificity.     

Up,down, and away: placing privilege in Bucharest,Romania

Anthropologists have become increasingly sophisticated in the analysis of class by detailing the urban margins, by ‘studying up’ to examine elite wealth, and by charting the rise of the global middle classes. The anthropological commitment to depth, however, tends to keep these three strata separate in ways that mirror analytically the kind of segregation observed on the ground. Tight analytical framings risk obscuring the co-ordinates of privilege, especially in cities such as Bucharest, Romania, which are being rapidly transformed by foreign direct investment (FDI). This article, by contrast, moves across Bucharest's diverging strata to explore the complex interconnections between the pursuit of FDI, urban planning, and increased class separation. Ethnographically, the article examines the production of three kinds of emergent spaces – homeless shelters for the very poor; high-rise towers for the truly elite; and metro stations designed for the middle classes – to trace the interrelated politics of belonging and exclusion in a rapidly transforming city. The article suggests that these efforts, successful as they may be at ordering competing claims to the city, produce a landscape that cements unequal class relations into the built environment. Taken from Bucharest, this analysis offers wider insight into the future of contemporary urbanism in the European Union but also in cities the world over that are being similarly remade to attract global capital.