Reproducing „ghettoes”? Development in a village undergoing advanced peripheralisation

Abstract

High socio-spatial marginalisation has the consequence that socially excluded people and groups are spatially concentrated (spatialisation according to Vincze), or in other words “locked-up” in “rural ghettos”. Socio-spatial marginalisation has an ethnic dimension. The institutional system of ghettos sealed on by the mainstream society and existing in parallel (e.g. separate schools, illegal shops, public work) prevents locals from breaking out of their ghettoisation. If we regard (social) space as a space for action, we must go beyond the idea that people in villages live as powerless victims of ghettoisation. Based on the works of Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja, I consider spaces that are in an advanced state of peripheralisation (advanced peripheralisation, advanced socio-spatial marginalisation or ghettoisation) as “spaces of resistance”. I characterise local agency theoretically in terms of their individual, collective and organisational (political) autonomy and, empirically, through ethnographic methods. The case study of a civic local development initiative in a ghettoised village showed that individuals and groups have an agency despite advanced marginalisation and structural oppression. Due to structural oppression, however, they need outside help (local development). Local development can be interpreted in the context of power asymmetries. Power asymmetries characterise multiple relationships: between development organisations and the state, between the various decision-makers involved in local development (centre-periphery relationships typical of the relationship between small settlements and the capital or local elite and marginalised locals). However, power asymmetries also exist between the development organisation and the “beneficiaries”. In order to deconstruct patriarchal and racialising structures within which development organisations and their “beneficiaries” exist, it is important that the members of the development organisation are aware of their “white privilege” or gender-specic advantage. As far as the relationship between state and development organisations is concerned, state control and clientelism increasingly determine the relationship between the state and civil society. As a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult for those civil organisations that formulate criticisms of social policy or the institutional system to gain access to financial resources.