Coding Power

There is much more going on in terms of what power is exercised across the colliding spaces of the urban spaces. It is not that the seduction rather than domination is a more accurate portrayal of what happens on a day to day basis in city life, or that manipulation not authority is what keeps people in their place in such surroundings. Rather, power is likely to be exercised in a variety of ways, from domination through manipulation to seduction and even down to coercion. This is not because power is endowed with some kind of vapid plurality, where the different modalities take it in turn to act out their display. On the contrary, it is the nature of the places themselves, who they are constituted through the practices and the rhythms of the different groups which inhabit them, which gives rise to tangled arrangements of power and their execution.

In the case of the city of London, for instance, the experience of power for many of those who work on the edges of finance, as support staff or ancillary workers, is likely to a take in both acts of domination and manipulation, as constraint operates alongside concealment in the routine suppression of their visibility. Such acts are merely different ways of achieving the kind of smothered presence that comes to mind. Equally, the monumental buildings such as the fortress style Bank of England, do act as a source of authority, yet given the changing role and function of the institution, it is probably now more accurate to talk about its persuasive role in the contemporary world of UK finance.

The meaning and representation of institutions, their rituals, practices and architectural styles, change, reflecting the altered make up and composition of those who use them. It is not the case, therefore, that such institutions represent preformed blocs of power into which various groups are then slotted. Rather, the mixture of groups which inhabit various institutions, and the relationships which establish their presence, fill such institutional spaces with power. And it is from the specific relational ties, the interplay of forces that lie behind the comings and going of those present, that power takes it diverse modal expressions.

Perhaps the more familiar sense in which domination is considered as pervasive stems from the notion of closed space; spaces constructed by groups building walls, sometimes literally, to exclude those who are not the same. If up to this point we have been thinking about the cross cutting nature of people’s lives as they go about their daily business, the idea of spatial enclosure suggests a fixed separation, a boundary line in the sand so to speak, which produces a clear limit to the movement of others. In place of messy coexistences and jumbled lives, closed spaces are about groups walling themselves in, erecting social and physical barriers to the comings and goings of others.

The prohibitive aspect of space reveals itself through practices of discrimination between the comings and goings of those who work alongside one another. Only certain groups are seen and heard on a regular basis, as the lines of visibility and waves of sound suggest unequivocally who is and who is not ‘out of place’. What ever sense of borders one wishes to entertain is, on this account, the outcome of social interaction and an explicit spatial coding.

Borders and boundaries are the result of social interaction and not merely finite barriers. Doors represent both separateness and the possibility of stepping out beyond them - a point clearly illustrated by the swing movement of doors. Thus it is the ability of certain groups within the social space to superimpose their rhythms on others which gives the impression that they are the only ones present. The construction of space in their own likeness through a series of rituals, gestures and mannerisms serves to empty out the spaces of activity other than their own. Codes, function durably, more or less tacitly and ritually; they organise and rhythm time as well as relations (Lefebvre 1996:234).

Through a constant succession of movements and activities, the manner and style in which they are executed, as well as the mood and tempo they generate, the groups are able to dominate space in their own image. Excluded from the membership of such a space, then, are those whose rhythms and movements do not accord with the dominant representation and use of such spaces; such as service workers who pass unnoticed through the offices and buildings. Such groups are not physically excluded; rather their presence is smothered by a dominant coding of space. However, the power of abstract space to erase the traces of others, to reduce differences, is never entirely effective. The very attempts to achieve homogeneity do themselves produce spaces which ‘escape the system’s rule’ (Lefebvre, 1991:382).

Cultural separation, the act of self enclosure, is not only a characteristic of rich communities, however. As a defensive reaction, poor communities may wall themselves in as protection against the more economically or politically powerful in terms of resources. Ethnic groups may opt to draw a line around their community to avoid discrimination or to preserve an identity perceived to be under threat from the ‘outside‘. Such acts are rooted in Hannah Arendt’s mutual action, the solidarity networks that rest upon the mobilization of collective resources. Rather than think in terms of power as instrumental leverage, such acts of closure take their cue from the power to protect themselves, not from some desire to exercise ‘power over’ others. As a result, any notion of order is more likely to stem from informal and negotiated practices rather than prescribed codes of conduct.

Interestingly, the attention paid to the regularized, almost disciplined, styles of behaviour in the rich, gated communities is reminiscent of works done on diagrams of power. While we are moving away from a strict notion of enclosure as the domination of space to a consideration of other possible acts of power; such as inducement, but also the possibility of indirect manipulation or even arm’s length seduction. To suppose that even closed spaces have the last word on domination would be to gloss over the different ways in which closure can be achieved. But the point here is a rather different one from simply drawing attention to the fact that power is exercised in subtle and not so subtle ways. It is that much of what we take to be closed space is usually less closed than it seems and much of what appears open and accessible is not always so .

Most bounded spaces, it seems are relative rather than total and whilst some borders have hardened over time, such as migration, many of the everyday spaces which make up people’s lives - from shopping malls, office spaces and housing estates to public parks, airport lounges and a whole slew of public institutions - are less obviously impermeable. Even in closed, gated communities, boundaries are routinely crossed by all manner of trades people and public officials, as well as friends and relatives, and the supposed stark lines of difference are compromised daily by the service rhythms of domestic care, maintenance and security staff. ‘Open walls’ rather than ‘enclosed worlds’ is perhaps a more apt metaphorical redecoration of the boundaries of such places. The porosity attached to places is something that Doreen Massey (1994), in particular, has long been keen to stress, and what we can take from this observation is that, in many a familiar place, people move in and around one another, sliding across each other’s lives, and establish a presence through interaction in all kinds of powerful and not so powerful ways. And such interactions, disrupt any easy cultural mapping of who is close at hand and who is distant, who belongs and who does not.



Extracted from:

Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago and London: Univ of Chicago Press

Arendt, H. (1961), Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought, London: Faber and Faber

Allen, J., (2003) Lost Geographies of Power, Oxford: Blackwell
Massey, D., (1993), ’Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place’, in Bird, J., Curtis, B., Putnam, T., Roberson, G., and Tickner, L. (eds) Mapping the Futures: local cultures, global change, London: Routledge, 59-69

Massey, D., (1994) a global sense of place, in Place and Gender, Oxford; Polity, 146-56

Lefebvre, H. (1991a) The production of space (trans. D. Nicholson Smith), Oxford: Blackwell

Lefebvre, H. (1996) Writings on Cities (trans. And eds E. Kofman and E. Lebas), Oxford: Blackwell