Exclusionary Conviviality

Between Mount Carmel and the Mediterranean Sea lies a city that has been called “the mother of strangers” and “a mixed city.” It is also known as “a city of coexistence,” in contrast to the wider social context of ethno-national separation in Israel. The residents of Haifa, however, live mostly in separate, homogenous neighborhoods. Only a minority of its inhabitants live in a heterogeneous social setting among members of other ethno-national groups. Hadar, one of Haifa’s most diverse neighborhoods, is where I conducted four years of ethnographic research for this dissertation. Surrounded by Hadar's residents, who endeavor to make sense of living with their Other(s), I studied the various practices they use to bridge the gap between their experience of living in a mixing social environment and the deepening discourse of separation in Israel. My main finding is that being subjected to these contradictory social forces induces practices of reflexivity that open a variety of paths to bridge this gap: from working to eliminate social diversity, to legitimizing acceptance of the gap and its virtues, and to imagining an alternative discourse. The dissertation introduces the concept of “Reflexive Coexistence” to academic and public discussions of mixed cities. This concept is developed by presenting and analyzing the different forms it may take: in practices of representing past experiences of coexistence, in everyday interactions between Hadar's residents, who have diverse senses of belonging to their neighborhood, and in residents’ future-oriented political activism and artistic projects. Particularly in light of deepening practices of separation between Jews and Arabs in Israel, learning from the social dynamics of mixing social settings can offer public and academic discussions new, counter-hegemonic ideas for a more hopeful future.

In this paper, Vollebergh investigates the commitment to establishing intercultural encounters by so-called ‘active’ white Flemish residents in Antwerp, and their perpetual disappointment with the responses of their neighbours of orthodox Jewish and Moroccan backgrounds. Instead of viewing these relationships either as a product of culturalist social cohesion policies, or as a vernacular ethical achievement that escapes culturalist politics, she argues that we should understand them through the figure of the Neighbour. Combining the theories of Emmanuel Levinas and Slavoj Žižek, she suggests that the neighbourly relation is a paradox in which the Neighbour as a nearby Other induces both an ethical desire for total openness in the engagement with this Other, as well as the uncanny sense that his/her Otherness haunts and makes impossible such an engagement. When viewed in this way, vernacular intercultural relationships, and the fantasies and frustrations surrounding them, emerge as the site where residents of multi-ethnic neighbourhoods in postcolonial Europe engage and struggle with existential and ethical questions of human interconnection and, especially, the effects of the culturalist inflection that these questions have gained.

2000

Journal of Housing and the Built Environment

In the mid-1990s, one of the main objectives of housing policy in the Netherlands was to stimulate the integration of diverse socioeconomic groups through housing strategies, with the goal being to create social cohesion and to address the problems encountered in low-income neighborhoods. Existing literature has studied the impact of social mix policies and policy interventions, concentrating on such outcomes as the spatial consequences of these policies in postwar neighborhoods; macro scale transformations in social mix areas; or shared perceptions of community in gentrifying neighborhoods. Taking a different perspective, this paper studies the impact of such policies at the individual interaction level to assess whether social mix policies can lead to new forms of interaction between the existing residents and newcomers, and consequently, to further cohesion in the area or city from a broader perspective. The paper studies the interaction between new and former neighbors inside out in a special area, Amsterdam Nieuw West neighborhood, Kolenkitbuurt Zuidelijk Veld 1-2, which is recognized as being one of the most deprived neighborhoods in the country. The research of the Kolenkitbuurt case shows clearly that social interactions between the Dutch-Turkish and the new native Dutch residents have been limited to more casual or neither positive nor negative interactions.

Community and Exclusion. Collective Violence in the Multiethnic (East) Central European Societies before and after the Holocaust (1848-1948) Physical violence has become a key topic of the historiography of the multiethnic societies in (East) Central Europe in the transition from the imperial to the nation-state order since at least the past two decades. Scholars have pointed out that violence is an inherent part of the conflict in interethnic and interreligious relationships, although violence was not always first marked by ethnic conflicts, but rather social ones, as the example of the food riots in Cisleithania during World War I has shown. To understand the historic region of (East) Central Europe and its cultural, social, and economic plurality it is therefore necessary to apply various concepts of violence, developed partially for Western and Eastern European societies. Researchers on anti-Jewish violence in l9th and early 20th century Germany have suggested the concept of “exclusionary violence” to analyze anti-Jewish riots, which differed from the pogroms in Russia in the absence of the intention to kill the victims. According to Werner Bergmann, Christhard Hoffmann, and Helmut Walser Smith, all forms of “exclusionary violence” share a common notion of the minority group(s) as a collective threat, the asymmetry of power between the rioters and the victims, the rioters’ low level of organization, and the relative absence of state power in times of crisis. In this definition, the pogroms are a specific, but not the only, form of exclusionary ethnic violence that enables one to identify the often fluid boundaries between ethnic riots and pogroms in (East) Central Europe. Despite these achievements of the historiography on collective violence in modern (East) Central Europe, it seems that different research milieus still remain separate from one another. For this reason, the annual conference of the Centre for Jewish studies in Prague in cooperation with the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences aims to bring together scholars working on collective violence in (East) Central Europe, including anti-Jewish violence, and violence against Roma and other minorities. What do the various forms of exclusionary violence in (East) Central Europe in the period between empire and nation-states, and in the aftermath of the Holocaust when the nation states were reconstructed, have in common? Which discourses, patterns, and rituals did they follow? How did exclusionary violence transform these communities, and how was this violence narrated and remembered afterwards? When looking at various forms of collective violence it becomes clear that non-genocidal violence – in contrast to the Holocaust – did not mean the end of culturally mixed neighborhoods, but played a major role in the (re)construction of communities, and fundamentally transformed the multiethnic societies from a long-term perspective.

2010

Undivided city' is one of the basic objectives of current development strategies with the aim of integrating minority groups to the majority of population sometimes by destroying the ethnic identities in favor of social cohesion. One of the basic policies originates from discussions on ethnic dimension of residential segregation/concentration. Local governments propose developing heterogeneous/mixedhousing areas shaped by the renewal efforts. These kinds of policies consider a linear relationship between the concentration of different social groups (ethnic and/or social status groups) in housing areas-even if it is by lawand social cohesion and more precise a linear relationship between ethnic concentrations and the rising element of xeno-racism. The contemporary debate about the status of immigrants witnesses outbreaks of xenophobia/xeno-racism by a popular imagination of strong concentrations of muslim communities as 'threats to security'. In other words there is a linear relationship between the neighborhood effects-the behaviour of individuals are directly related with the neighborhood in which they live-(Kauppinen, 2006) and social exclusion directed by xeno-racist movements and policy formations. Central in these discussions is an assumption that the civil disturbances have been sparked by the immigrants who have lacked assimilation (Cheong, et al, 2007). In this regard, especially second and third generation immigrants are accepted to be socially and economically excluded more with respect to their parents within the current economic conditions and their identity expectations in between their origins and the cultural sovereignty of a European Union country. However, destroying their social ties with their communities is in fact destroying their support in an environment in which they are excluded. Researchers prove the fact that there are other factors such as economic restructuring, transition from welfare society to market mechanisms, urban history, general housing policy and cultural orientation, in the residential segregation of immigrants (Deurloo, Musterd, 2001). Anti-immigration policies on the contrary, result in the empowerment of social solidarity networks reidentified within a system of ethnic and/or belief formations and strong (sometimes violent) resistance. The aim of this study is to put forward the reasons of segregation and/or concentration of the immigrant Turks in the case of Deventer/the Netherlands to discuss policy concerns of social cohesion in a culturally diverse society. Thus social inclusion is clarified with an evaluation of the factors of segregation and concentration within the forms of 'institutional racism'.

Community Development Journal, 2006

Dutch urban renewal policies aim to engineer a mixture of different income groups in previously working-class neighbourhoods. The underlying notion is that such a social mix will improve the 'liveability' of the neighbourhood and that the more affluent residents will prevent the poorest from falling into a culture of poverty. As a result of this policy, the composition of the population in such neighbourhoods has changed and one can distinguish between the so-called native Dutch, immigrants, and 'newcomers,' who face problems in living together and sharing public spaces. This paper discusses the dynamics between the different groups in a Dutch neighbourhood, including its norms and values, and the role of intervening agencies.

2013

Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 2009

Contemporary urban theory has started to question the elevation of diversity as a panacea for enduring urban problems-segregation, prejudice and intergroup hostility. This critique coincides with an opposite tendency within classic contact theory and research. The latter tradition has developed an increasing enthusiasm for face-to-face interaction. The contact hypothesis, which presupposes established contact, has received conclusive support independent of target groups and contact settings. Research on 'lived diversity', which includes both contact and lack of contact, offers two supplementary insights. It shows, on the one hand, that boundaries are inscribed in social spaces. Physical proximity between ethnic and social groups tends to have a minor effect on interaction. Interaction, on the other hand, is not essential to attitude formation. Both subfields within contact research have confirmed that urban space may act as a catalyst for tolerant attitudes. This observation corresponds with increasing recognition of affective states, such as empathy, anxiety and group threat. Contact research has therefore, in summary, transcended the scope of the contact hypothesis. It has expanded into the realm of urban theory, which foreshadows future collaboration between the two traditions. Some key points for such exchange are suggested at the end of the article. Future research should combine an open-ended approach to casual contact with a diversified conception of diversity and a richer conception of urban space. A move in this direction would leave substantial space for geographical research.

Berger M., 2018, " Questioning some forms and qualities of urban togetherness: friendliness, inclusion, hospitality ", in Mathieu Berger, Benoît Moritz, Louise Carlier, Marco Ranzato (Eds), Designing Urban Inclusion, Brussels, Metrolab Series, #1, pp.177-181, 2018