Making the street visible: Placing racial violence in context

Abstract

Abstract This article suggests that in attempting to generalise from the specific there is a danger that academic analysis of a subject such as ‘racial violence’ suppresses the significance of the context in which ‘racial’ antagonisms develop. The article examines the manner in which a vocubulary of urban space, drawing in particular on the rhetoric and realities of ‘the streets’, is useful in understanding the horrific events of late 1993 and 1994 in the East End of London. In part this demonstrates the interdependence of processes of representation and practises of mobilisation in the development of the new public spaces of the city. The streets of the East End are the simultaneous product of struggles of resistance, local political cultures, a particular articulation of a post‐industrial political‐economy and urban myths of gang violence. As both a privileged metaphor informing popular knowledge and the site of adolescent socialisation the streets are rendered visible in particular debates about mainst...