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During the early to mid-1970s, when feature-length hardcore films became a popular cultural phenomenon in the United States, hardcore came to designate more than just a genre or an industry—it became a ubiquitous mode of performance, an ethos, and a style. This article explores how hardcore as a style was taken up by the popular gay-marketed entertainment magazine After Dark. Through a close descriptive analysis of three photo spreads from 1975–76, it illuminates how female, gay male, and otherwise non-straight-identifying performers participated in a hardcore stylistic that, paradoxically, worked to shape queer elaborations of heteroeroticism. Within these vital images of singers, dancers, models, and performance artists, created at the height of hardcore's newfound cultural influence, performances of female-male coupling and group-centered socio-sexual activity both worked with and moved to dissolve normative heterosexist configurations of sex and gender.

Norbert Elias provides a very useful theoretical framework for understanding long-term changes in childhood-adulthood relations at the societal level. Key processes central to this theorization include: the increasing separation of the social worlds of children and adults; the increasing distance between childhood and adulthood; the partial defunctionalisation of the family; the civilizing of parents; changes in the 'we-I balance' towards the 'I'; and the gradual conversion of social constraints into self-restraints. Yet variable trajectories are under-developed in Elias' work: the differing nature of these interrelated social processes for different 'outsider' groups in society were not systematically addressed by Elias. However, this paper argues that Elias' theories on childhood do provide us with a very useful conceptual framework from which to understand these variable trajectories. It applies his theories on childhood and individualization to Gypsy-Traveller/Roma groups in Europe and situates them within a long-term established-outsider figuration. The paper argues that the above processes differ markedly for many groups and, coupled with the existence of a very strong group orientation and long-term stigmatisation, are central to accounting for their relative lack of social integration. That is, differing processes of childhood and family socialisation are crucial in explaining how Gypsy-Traveller/Roma groups have maintained their own group identity and cultural continuity under intense pressures to assimilation and conformity.

AbstractThis article utilizes Loïc Wacquant's concept of the ghetto as an analytical tool in understanding the marginal and ambivalent position of Gypsy‐Traveller populations resident on sites (or camps) in Britain. The article argues that the fruitful work of quantitative urban scholars on ethnic segregation in the UK has neglected Gypsy‐Travellers. It suggests that the theoretical concept of the ghetto can elucidate the ways in which the spatial marginality of sites serves as a weapon of 'confinement and control' for the dominant, and an 'integrative and protective device' for the stigmatized Gypsy‐Traveller population. Drawing on qualitative empirical data, key characteristics in Wacquant's definition of the ghetto are shown to hold true for Gypsy‐Traveller sites; these include ethnic homogeneity, spatial confinement, shared cultural identity, mutual distancing and a retreat into the private sphere of the family. This comparison also reveals key differences in terms of economic function, parallel institutionalism and the relationship with the state. The article points to the potential offered by Wacquant's theory and suggests that the dismissal of the ghetto concept within the UK ignores its power as a tool of comparison. The article suggests that qualitative and theoretical approaches should seek to complement the work of quantitative social scientists through focusing on everyday social relations and encounters between ethnic minority groups and 'host' populations — both within and outwith residential boundaries. It also questions the urban‐centred focus of debates on ethnic segregation.

Loїc Wacquant's concept of territorial stigmatisation has resonated widely across the social sciences and is increasingly called upon in analyses and critiques of contemporary modes of governing marginality. It forms a key part of his broader theorisation of the polarised city and urban scholars have responded to his call for comparative analyses of neoliberal state-crafting in applying it to other urban contexts. This paper focuses on non-urban deindustrialised and peripheral spaces in discussing the ways in which the shifting interdependencies, differing historical trajectories, geographies (including terrain), and social relations of such spaces mark them out as outliers within, but not necessarily incompatible with, Wacquant's schema. It focuses on the former coalfield communities of the Welsh Valleys in the UK as one such example of a peripheral, deindustrialised 'area of relegation' distinct from urban locales. We bring together a rich body of UK scholarship that articulates the coalfields as 'laboratories of deindustrialisation' with Wacquant's framework. In doing so, we offer a critique of Wacquant's integration of social, physical and symbolic space. We argue that terrain and landscape are weakly incorporated within Wacquant's theorising, and those influenced by his writings, and discuss the potential of the theory of affordances as a useful complement in more fully integrating physical space in accounts of territorial stigmatisation.

AbstractRecent research on Roma stigmatization has tended to focus on the marginal socio‐economic and spatial position of Roma people within European societies, with poverty, persistent inequalities and substandard housing conditions (for example, ghettoization) highlighting their differential treatment. Central to such accounts are group images and stereotypes of Roma as 'benefit scroungers' and/or 'beggars' lacking notions of self‐restraint and social responsibility. This body of research is hugely important in terms of its contribution to an understanding of the complex dynamics of marginalization and stigmatization of poor Roma households. Yet not all Roma are characterized by poverty and economic hardship. This article explores the neglected experiences of wealthy Roma within urban spaces in Romania. It draws on empirical evidence from interviews with Roma families, leaders and local authorities. Our analysis exposes the way in which Roma are vehemently stigmatized regardless of their economic position or housing circumstances and highlights deep underlying sentiments towards them within Romanian society. We critique Wacquant's concept of territorial stigmatization by applying it to wealthy groups outwith typical areas of relegation (for example, Roma ghettos) within the specific urban context of post‐socialist Romania. While our analysis points to the internalization of stigma, we also identify distinct defensive strategies wealthy Roma employ to counter and avoid stigmatization. We suggest that a focus on the neglected spaces of wealthy Roma groups can facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of the distinct urban power relations that shape Roma stigmatization, reveal how this long‐term process has recently been accentuated within Europe alongside a more overt populist and anti‐Roma political agenda, and contribute to the development and refinement of Wacquant's thesis.

This paper presents a critical analysis of the contemporary policy focus on promoting employability among young people in the UK. Drawing on analysis of UK policy approaches to tackling youth unemployment since the late 1970s, we suggest that existing critiques of employability as 'supply-side orthodoxy' fail to capture fully its evolving meaning and function. Under the UK Coalition Government, it became increasingly colonised as a targeted tool of urban governance to legitimise ever more punitive forms of conditional welfare. We argue that this colonisation undermines the value of the notion of employability as an academic tool for understanding the reasons why young people face difficulties in entering the labour market. The paper suggests that the notion of youth transitions offers more potential for understanding youth unemployment, and that more clearly linking this body of research to policy could provide a fruitful avenue for future research. Such a shift requires a longer term, spatially informed perspective as well as greater emphasis on the changing power relations that mediate young people's experiences of wider social and economic transformations. The paper concludes that promoting employment among urban young people requires a marked shift to address the historically and geographically inadequate knowledge and assumptions on which policies are based.

The responses to the English city riots of 2011 bear a remarkable resemblance to those of historical urban disorders in terms of the way in which they are framed by concerns over "moral decline", "social malaise" and a "lack of self-restraint" among certain sections of the population. In this paper we draw on the work of Norbert Elias and take a long-term perspective in exploring historical precedents and parallels relating to urban disorder and anti-social behaviour. We reject the notion of "Broken Britain" and argue that a more "detached" perspective is necessary in order to appreciate that perceived crises of civilisation are ubiquitous to the urban condition. Through this historical analysis, framed by Elias' theory of involvement and detachment, we present three key arguments. Firstly, that a 'retreat into the present' is evident among both policy discourse and social science in responding to contemporary urban disorder, giving rise to ahistorical accounts and the romanticisation of previous eras; secondly, that particular moral panics have always arisen, specifically focused upon young and working class populations and urban disorder; and, thirdly, that previous techniques of governance to control these populations were often far more similar to contemporary mechanisms than many commentaries suggest. We conclude by advocating a long-term, detached perspective in discerning historical precedents and their direct linkages to the present; and in identifying what is particular about today's concerns and responses relating to urban disorder.