Chronic urban trauma The slow violence of housing dispossession

• Published in: Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) Vol. 56; no. 2; pp. 385 - 400
• Main Author: Pain, Rachel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England Sage Publications, Ltd 01.02.2019; SAGE Publications; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Action research; Aggression; Decolonization; Emotional abuse; Environmentalism; Feminism; Globalization; Housing; Humanities; Legitimacy; Lethality; Participatory action research; Political violence; Postcolonialism; Poverty; Psychiatry; Psychological aspects; Psychological distress; Psychological trauma; Public housing; Research projects; Trauma; Urban areas; Urban studies; Violence; trauma; 阶级; 创伤; housing; 暴力; community; inequality; 社区; 不平等; 绅士化; 拆迁; 住房; displacement; gentrification; class; violence
• ISSN: 0042-0980; 1360-063X
• DOI: 10.1177/0042098018795796

This paper sets the idea of slow violence into dialogue with trauma, to understand the practice and legitimisation of the repeated damage done to certain places through state violence. Slow violence (Nixon R (2011) Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) describes the ‘attritional lethality’ of many contemporary effects of globalisation. While originating in environmental humanities, it has clear relevance for urban studies. After assessing accounts of the post-traumatic city, the paper draws insights from feminist psychiatry and postcolonial analysis to develop the concept of chronic urban trauma, as a psychological effect of violence involving an ongoing relational dynamic. Reporting from a three-year participatory action research project on the managed decline and disposal of social housing in a former coalmining village in north-east England, the paper discusses the temporal and place-based effects of slow violence. It argues that chronic urban trauma becomes hard-wired in place, enabling retraumatisation while also remaining open to efforts to heal and rebuild. 本文探讨慢性暴力的概念与创伤的关系，以了解通过国家暴力对某些地方造成重复损害的做法及其被合法化的过程。慢性暴力（Nixon R (2011)《慢性暴力与穷人的环保》，剑桥，麻省：哈佛大学出版社）描述了全球化的许多当代影响的“消耗性杀伤力”。它源于环境人文学科，但与城市研究有着明显的相关性。在评估了创伤后城市的情况后，本文从女权主义精神病学和后殖民分析中汲取了见解，以提出慢性城市创伤的概念，作为涉及持续关系动态的暴力的心理影响。我们的分析基于一项为期三年的参与行动研究项目，该项目涉及英格兰东北部一个前煤矿村的社会住房的管制性衰落和处置。以此为基础，本文讨论了慢性暴力的暂时性的、基于地方的影响。本文认为，慢性城市创伤会成为地方的固有现象，这使得创伤会不断重复发生，但同时也给治愈和重建留下了机会。