Middle States Geographer. 1998,31: 64-72 EXCLUSIONARY DISCOURSE IN NEW YORK CITY AND CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA Grant Saff Department of Economics and Geography Hofstra University Hempstead, NY 11549 ABSTRACT: This paper examines the discursive practices employed by residents and property owners to justify the exclusion of squatters from the Lower East Side in New York City and from three suburhs in Cape Town, South Africa. In these cases the residellts and property owners voiced nearly identical objections to justify the exclusion oj" the "other" from "their" neighborhoods. The main justifications, couched in race neutral terms, were that the squatters would increase crime. decrease property values, spread disease and despoil the natural environmellt. It is argued that while these discursive practices often camouflage racial prejudice. this does not explain the occurrence ofsimilar discursive patterns in areas where race was not a major factor. I argue that a sati~factory explanation for these discursive commonalities should embrace both class and racial dynamics and must he situated within the context ofcapitalist property relations. INTRODUCTION 1997, 318). The reason for choosing the three Cape Town cases is that all three areas have undergone fairly similar experiences and they have all generated Within society there is constant conflict over a substantial volume of media coverage. Likewise, the squatters on the Lower East Side received a great access to space and terri tory. In this context. control over space is a very clear signifier of power (and deal of media attention during the late 19XOs and into hence, often racial) relations in society. In this the early 1990s. The aim of providing a comparative context is equation everyone is seemingly meant to know their to show that very similar exclusionary discursive place, both in society and within the spatial landscape. As a white youth in Carroll Gardens patterns can be found within seemingly very different social contexts. In both countries the response of commented to justify the racially motivated assault on a black teenager who had emerged from a subway residents and property owners raises the broader station in this predominantly white part of Brooklyn, question of how discourse can be used to legitimate exclusionary geographies. This in turn gets to the "It's boundaries. You pass the line, you get chased out." (Martin, 1997, L35). The idea of socially (and heart of debates over the nature of property relations often racially) defined space is the underlying theme within capitalism and raises especially troubling of this paper which examines the language and concerns for those, such as progressive urban strategies that three affluent communities in Cape planners and policymakers. concerned with Town (Hout Bay, Noordhoek, and Milnerton) and producing a more equitable division of urban space. one gentrifying neighborhood in New York City (the Lower East Side) used to justify the exclusion of the "other," in these cases urban squatters, from "their" DISCOURSE ANALYSIS space. As Sibley (1992, 113) points out, "space represents power in that control of space confers the power to exclude" and thus discourse analysis shows According to Wetherall and Potter ( 1992.2­ how particular constructions of place help sustain or 3) discourse analysis focuses on activities of legitimate residential exclusion (see Dixon et a1.. "justification. rationalization, categorization, 64 Exclusionary Discourse in New York City and Cape Town attribution, making sense, naming, blaming and exclusion is towards people of the same race. It identifying." Discourse analysis thus highlights is therefore important that we acknowledge, how forms of discourse "institute, solidify. when considering neighborhood opposition to changc. lTcalc and reproduce social formations" issues such as squatting. that this opposition and Wetherall and Potter (1992). As social its discursive manifestations must always be formations have a spatial dimension, discourse situated within the relevant economic context. analysis is particularly suited to an analysis of Thus, when attempting to analyze the codified debates and conflict over the ordering of space. discourse of residential exclusion one should Exclusionary discourse therefore plays an remain aware that while at any given time the important role in legitimating spatial exclusivity. relative weight of class and race are contingent To achieve this spatial exclusivity there first has on the specificity of a particular place and the to be a form of identity ascription that confers a socially constructed norms and values of those positive group identity to the culturally and/or living in that locality, the context of these economically dominant members of society, struggles is always mediated through the self­ while simultaneously labeling another group as interest that is engendered by the unequal "different" and usually, by implication, inferior. division of space (and hence of resources) Language becomes an important signifier in this inherent within the capitalist land market. This process, allowing the dominant group to ascribe unequal division of space perpetuates continual various social pathologies, such as propensity spatial conflict, with each neighborhood towards criminality, to the "other" and in so desperately trying to protect and maintain its doing legitimate their exclusion from particular position from those above (such as financial spaces and places in society. Simultaneously, the speculators) and below (such as squatters) thc ascription of these pathologies to the "other" urban hierarchy. As the following cases will allows the dominant group to set itself up with show, this can be illustrated by looking at the an opposed set of positive values. In these cases, reactions of residents to squatters moving into groups construct a version of reality that takes on "their" areas. the status of objective truth in their own minds. In spatial terms this can take the form of the dominant group reifying the virtues of their own THE CONTEXT space while denigrating the space of the "other" and simultaneously preventing them from Cape Town accessing their own space. In its most overt and crude form the The unequal racial partitioning of Cape Town, discourse of exclusion is avowedly racist. In together with a lack of affordable housing for most contemporary societies it is. however, no "non-whites", has meant that the city has a very longer acceptable to base residential exclusion long history of black squatting (see Western. on an openly racist discourse. This means that 1981). With the erosion of enforcement of the language of exclusion has to be more subtle. apartheid influx controls and later, the repeal of These more subtle mechanisms of exclusion can the Pass Laws ( 1986), there was a rapid growth take many forms. With regard to urban squatters, of black urbanization during the 1980s. with a the most common assertions from existing concomitant growth in squatting (see Cook, residents is that they will cause an increase in 1991; 1992). During this period the black urban crime, diminish the neighborhood's property poor's search for available land on occasion led values, destroy the "character" of the to the appearance of 'squatter' camps within the neighborhood and despoil the natural boundaries of more affluent areas. Within the environment. Cape Town Metropolitan area the three most While it is tempting to see the motivations noted examples occurred within the affluent behind most exclusionary discourse in racial 'white' suburbs of Noordhoek (see Sowman terms, this becomes more difficult in situations 1990), Hout Bay (see Dixon et aI., 1994; Dixon, where exclusionary suburbs are racially mixed or 65 Middle States Geographer, 1998, 31: 64-72 et aI., 1996; Oelofse, 1994) and Milnerton (see and removed the homeless from their traditional Saff, 1996; 1998a). While the events in each of shelters in subways and under bridges. these areas have their own historic specificities, From the late 1970s the ethnically diverse they all nnerthdess display the events in each of and predominantly working-class Lower East broadly sllndar characteristics. First, all are Side has been a particular flashpoint for clashes upper-middle class areas characterized by between squatters, activists, property speculators, expensive low-density owner-occupied homes. gentrifiers, local residents and the City'" In the Second, by 1991 all three areas had fairly early 1980s, the homeless began sleeping in substantial squatter communities and, given the Tompkins Square Park, a ten and a half acre park political realities of the transition period, the within the heart of the area. By the late 19XOs local authorities were forced to enter into over 200 homeless people were living in the negotiations with these squatter communities. park, and after August 1988 some of them began Third, ignoring the vociferous objections of erecting shelters on its southern portion (see homeowners, the local authorities set aside a Greshof and Dale, 1994, 270). After a number of piece of land within the boundaries of each of previous clashes, in December 1989 police in these suburbs to house the hitherto scattered riot gear moved into the park, tore down existing squatters on one permanent, consolidated site. In structures and evicted between 150 and 300 providing these sites, the authorities persons (Harloe et aI., 1992, 197).1 This was acknowledged the right of the squatters to remain followed by evictions during 1991 after which 4 in these areas. I Finally, since granting the the park was closed for renovations. squatters permanent residence, the majority of During the same period, groups of residents in these areas have attempted to have as predominantly white squatters occupied vacant little contact with the ex-squatters as possible city-owned buildings in the area. By May 1989 it while simultaneously blaming them for what was estimated that there were at least sixteen they see as the decline in their quality of life (see squatters' buildings between Houston and 14th Oelofse, 1994). Streets on the Lower East Side, containing as many as 800 squatters (Powell, 1989, 8)'. Since New York City that time.