An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Ioanna Korfiati (Postdoctoral Fellow; University of Edinburgh).
Wacquant and Gramsci in Eastern Crete: Land dispossession, stigma, and the making of territorial ‘common sense’
This paper aims to bring literature on stigma in conversation with Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and to extend the usefulness of Loïc Wacquant’s concept of territorial stigmatisation to the study of the marginalisation of entire regions and subsequent processes of land dispossession. I draw on a rich urban geographical scholarship on territorial stigma to examine how ‘regional taint’ is mobilised to help legitimise and impose large-scale energy and tourism investments as a form of territorial ‘common sense’. Focusing on a case study of land dispossession and socio-spatial conflict on Eastern Crete’s area of Sitia, the paper aims to contribute to the wealth of literature on territorial stigmatisation twofold: by examining the analytical usefulness of the concept beyond the urban, looking at symbolic defamation as a tool for the neoliberal “re-development” of peripheral land; and, drawing on a spatial reading of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, by taking a close, critical sociological look at the production, internalisation and contestation of stigma within a local context of socio-spatial conflict and struggle.
Click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/86535202023
Passcode: Vr8f3ew2