"GANGS AND GANGLANDS IN MARSEILLE (AND ELSEWHERE)

Mesopolhis laboratory joint seminar,

Organised by the Urban Studies cross-disciplinary theme - Spatialised social groups, local institutions and urban policies' and its 'Marseillologie permanent seminar', theme 4 'Socio-spatial dynamics and political mobilisation' and theme 6 'Norms, deviance and governmental knowledge'.

This Mesopolhis cross-disciplinary seminar session will look at the initial field results of the comparative research on gang dynamics in Marseilles carried out by the 'ERC Gangs' team led by Swiss anthropologist and urban planner Dennis Rodgers. This will be an opportunity to analyse the issues of urban violence, crime, stigmatisation and exclusion from the perspective of Marseilles in two stages: firstly, through the presentation of surveys that took place over several months in three different urban districts of Marseilles (carried out respectively by Maroussia Ferry, Alice Daquin, and, jointly, Dennis Rodgers and the Danish anthropologist Steffen Jensen), and secondly through a comparative perspective of Marseilles with other gang phenomena and urban exclusion. ganglands urban areas studied in Nicaragua (Managua), South Africa (Cape Town), Spain (Algeciras) and Italy (Naples).

As well as being an opportunity to find out more about the team's research, this seminar is also a great opportunity for the laboratory's researchers to forge possible collaborations with Dennis Rodgers and his team. Dennis has just received support from Mesopolhis for an application to the A*Midex Chair of Excellence for a project focusing on the development of a relational notion of urban violence.

Programme

• 2.00 pm: Presentation of the half-day seminar (Cesare Mattina, Claire Bénit-Gbaffou, Audrey Freyermuth)
• 2.10pm: Dennis Rodgers, "Introduction to the ERC GANGS project".
• 2.20pm: Maroussia Ferry, "From 'curse' to destruction: plural memories and criminal reputation in the demolition process of a district in the north of Marseilles" 2.50pm: Alice Daquin, "Between the district and the State: the mothers of a Marseilles housing estate as new political intermediaries in everyday life".
• 15:20: Dennis Rodgers and Steffen Jensen, "De la violence urbaine: comprendre l'économie politique plurielle et relationnelle de l'insécurité dans une cité marseillaise" (On urban violence: understanding the plural and relational political economy of insecurity in a Marseilles housing estate).
• 3.50pm: Questions from seminar participants and first debate
• 4.10pm: break
• 16:30: Dennis Rodgers, Alice Daquin and Maroussia Ferry, "Sortir (ou pas) de la marseillologie? Comparing the results of research on Marseilles with other international ERC Gangs projects".
• 16.50: Debate with participants and prospects for collaboration with Mesopolhis
• 5.30 pm: Conclusions

---

Contact Cesare.mattina-at-univ-amu.fr

---

Speakers' bio :

Dennis Rodgers

Dennis Rodgers is a research professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva (Switzerland), where he directs the ERC GANGS project ("Gangs, Gangsters and Ganglands: Towards a Global Comparative Ethnography"). His recent publications include 'Entre mémoire du passé et anticipation du futur : Guerres, gangs et vendettas au Nicaragua', in the book edited by Catherine Courtet, Mireille Besson, Françoise Lavocat and François Lecercle, La mémoire du futur (Rencontres Recherche et Création du Festival d'Avignon), Paris, CNRS éditions, 2022, as well as a special bilingual issue of the Swiss Journal of Sociocultural Anthropology (n°29, 2024) on 'Gangs, Gangsters and Ganglands: Towards a Global Comparative Ethnography'. The law of outlaws Order and law within, with and beyond criminal groups" (co-edited with Martin Lamotte, CITERES).

Maroussia Ferry

Maroussia Ferry is an anthropologist, lecturer at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and member of the Centre Maurice Halbwachs (CMH). Her research focuses on the legacy of the social upheavals, particularly in terms of gender relations and moral economies, that followed the collapse of the Soviet empire in Georgia. She is also conducting research with the ERC GANGS (IHEID, Geneva) on the memory dynamics at work in a district of northern Marseille at a time when its total demolition was under way in a context of land speculation. Her most recent publications include They toil, they blaze "Women's perspectives on the legal order of 'thieves within the law' in post-Soviet Georgia: competing with state laws, between partisan morality and legal formalism", Swiss Journal of Sociocultural Anthropology /Revue suisse d'anthropologie sociale et culturelle (n°29, 2024).

Alice Daquin

Alice Daquin is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at IHEID in Geneva and a member of the ERC GANGS research project. Her research focuses on working-class neighbourhoods, family and gender dynamics, and the political commitments of residents based on their living space. She is also exploring collaborative, audio-visual and feminist methodologies, which she uses in her ethnographic research and its dissemination. Her thesis, based on an ethnography of a Marseilles housing estate, analyses the existence of an ordinary political maternalism, in which mothers become key intermediaries between the State and the residents of working-class neighbourhoods. Her most recent publications are on Care coalitions in times of health crisis: a moral and political reclaiming of working-class neighbourhoods "Cahiers du Genre (n°72, 2022) and " Mothers in working-class neighbourhoods: intermediaries on the edge "The Conversation, 31 July 2023.

---