The Street as an Affective Atmosphere

• In Event: Towards a Bourdieusian Criminology: Theorising Inequality and Injustice

Abstract

The concept of ‘the street’ has a long and distinguished pedigree in studies of youth, crime and deviance. A site of both danger and protection, crime and culture, art and politics, ‘the street’ represents some of the most vital components of the criminological imagination, and has attracted a distinguished alumnus of scholars: from Benjamin to Jacobs, Whyte to Bourgois. Recent criminological analyses of ‘the street’, drawing from Bourdieusian perspectives, have drawn attention to a preconscious, affective dimension in relation to street crime. In this paper, we aim to broaden and deepen these approaches through engagement with the notion of ‘affective atmosphere’. The concept flows from the ‘affective turn’ in the humanities and social sciences and draws on emerging work on ‘atmosphere’ in philosophy, cultural geography and critical legal studies. An affective atmosphere denotes a spatialised feeling, or ‘sensuous geography’, that has the capacity to act on individuals in a quasi-agentic manner. The notion of affective atmosphere offers the opportunity to explore the homologies that may exist between different street-based groups, necessitating a broader sociological framing of ‘the street’, as well as offering a vocabulary through which new perspectives can be offered on formation of habitus.

Authors

• Daniel Matthews, University of Hong Kong

• Alistair Fraser, University of Glasgow