Dixon, J., Levine, M. &McCauley,R. (2006).Locating Impropriety:
Street Drinking, Moral Order, and the
Ideological Dilemma of Public Space. Political
Psychology, 27(2), 187- 206.
The article sets out to consider the manner
in which certain practices are classified as improprieties. In their study, the
authors chose to concentrate on an ongoing research that seeks to understand
public perception of street drinking. The setting Market Square in Manchester
city which was one of the public spaces where drinking bans had come into
effect. A total of 59 people of which 56 were white participated in the study
which was by way of semi-structured interviews. A preliminary review of related
literature guided the direction of the study.
One of the major findings of the study was
the fact that respondents viewed street drinking as an incivility. For
instance, some of the respondents considered street drinking to be noisy which
was a departure from what was expected of the square. Incivility of street
drinking also showed through its visual incongruity. Public consumers of
alcohol looked out of place in the eyes of many of the respondents. Secondly,
it also came out from the study that the incivility of an act like street
drinking largely depended on the construction of public space. For instant, respondents
tended to make a distinction between public and private spheres which drinking
consigned to the private spheres. This occasionally came out when some
respondents suggested that they would not mind those drinking in pubs. The
construction of street drinking as an incivility also stemmed from its
transgression on the accessibility of the square as a public space. Lastly, the
authors have also had to grapple with the ideological dilemma that emerges from
a nuanced analysis of public perception of street drinking. A simplistic
analysis of the situation may point to a clear distinction between what is a
public and private space respectively. A
closer scrutiny will, however, reveal that such kind of clarity does not exist.
Collins, D.C.A., & Kearns, R.A. (2001).Under Curfew and under Siege?
Legal Geographies of Young People.Geoforum,
32,389-403.
The study was an analysis of the role of
curfew as a tool of social control employed by a hegemonic group towards other
groups in the society. The introduction of curfews in New Zealand in the 1990s
requiring young people to stay out of public spaces provided the setting for
the study. Echoing throughout the paper is the message that curfews targeting
the young people in the two towns played much more than the stated need to
control youth crime. For one, they also served to portray youth deviance in the
two towns as a phenomenon visited upon the residents by people from without. There
were instances where study respondents attributed youth deviance in the towns
to other young people coming from bigger towns like Auckland. In a way, the
theme that emerges is that of a group attempting to pass the back. Curfews also
came out as a way for the hegemonic group in the society to enforce a standard
conception of parental responsibility. Thus, children were being sent home some
that those parents who may not have apt with their responsibility may learn to
catch up.
That curfews in the two small towns in New
Zealand could be used beyond the stated needs to control youth crime is not new
to New Zealand. In discussing the situation in America, the author alludes to the
concept of moral panic. This is where those with a political agenda may push it
to the top of society’s concern through fear. It conditions the public to long
for a solution. The author sees the call for youth curfews to have been
facilitated in the same manner. The experience in America indicates that
curfews emanating from moral panic may be politically expedient but they
normally result into bad law. This is because of their tendency to target
specific groups like the young.
The Legal Regulation of Taste: Annoying
Noises, Unkempt Yards, and the ‘Quality and Tranquility
of Life.’
The chapter is a critical look at the power
of municipal authorities in both the United States and Canada to regulate
certain aspects of urban living that could be seen to imply preferences for
certain cultures. It bemoans the fact that municipalities in both countries
cannot be said to possess any more expertise in these areas than any other
institutions like the courts. The groups
whose cultural preferences seem to be favored by the municipal laws on
aesthetics include the middle aged, the middle-class as well as married
couples. This is, however, not to say that the municipal regulations in the
relevant areas overtly set out to favor the preferences of these groups. Rather,
it is the manner in which those laws are fashioned that leads to their
functional bias towards those cultures.
A municipal regulation of noise presents
examples of how the applications of these laws lead to functional biases in
favor of certain cultural preferences. Such regulations are often couched in a
manner that leaves room for the exercise of discretion on the people enforcing
the laws. In particular, peg the accepted standard to a reference point which
is usually the reasonable standard. In
the same breadth, regulations on smell also follow the same approach where
reasonable standard seems to the reference point. In both cases, enforcement
often tends to fall back on the standards preferred by the middle aged, the
middle-class as well as the married as the reference point. A possible
explanation for this outcome could be the manner in which city governance takes
place. Those able to influence decision makers at the council level tends to
have their preferences taken into account. The three groups are more likely
than other groups to succeed at this.
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