Abstract:
The COVID-19 \'hard lockdowns\' in Melbourne, Australia in 2020 targeted public housing estates thus trading on perceptions of risk associated with public housing as some of the most stigmatised sites in post-industrial cities. This article draws on interviews with Melbourne public housing tenants on their experience of COVID-19 lockdowns to analyse the place of stigma in residents\' accounts. Pairing Wacquant et al\'s (2014) concept of \'territorial stigma\' with sociological work on the biopolitics of stigma we consider the dynamics of stigma, tracing how it functions to delimit community boundaries and justify pandemic containment measures. Residents navigate multiple layers of stigma, including stereotypes of public housing, normative judgements of neighbouring residents, and a broader public housing system riven with structural issues. Members of these communities are both the targets of stigma and seek to distance themselves from those seen as vectors of stigma. Our participants report mobilising social distancing strategies couched in normative assessments of perceived risk based on physical appearance, presumed drug use and past conduct. We explore the implications of these enactments of territorial stigma and trace the logics of abjection that construct public housing as deprived urban zones, home to abject \'Others\' perceived as threatening the health of the community.
摘要:
墨尔本的COVID-19“硬封锁”,澳大利亚在2020年将公共住房作为目标,因此将与公共住房相关的风险视为后工业城市中最污名化的场所。本文借鉴了对墨尔本公共住房租户的采访,了解他们对COVID-19封锁的经验,以分析居民账户中的污名。将Wacquant等人(2014)的“领土污名化”概念与关于污名化生物政治的社会学工作配对,我们考虑污名化的动态,追踪它如何发挥作用,以划定社区边界,并为大流行遏制措施辩护。居民们驾驭着多层的耻辱,包括对公共住房的陈规定型观念,邻近居民的规范性判断,和更广泛的公共住房系统充满了结构性问题。这些社区的成员既是污名化的目标,又试图与那些被视为污名化媒介的人保持距离。我们的参与者报告了动员社会距离策略,这些策略体现在基于外表的感知风险的规范评估中,假定吸毒和过去的行为。我们探讨了这些领土污名化法令的含义,并追溯了将公共住房建设为贫困城市地区的排斥逻辑,被视为威胁社区健康的“其他人”的家庭。