CRISIS - Lingua Urbana interdisciplinary seminar: Building language, building the urban fabric

Title : The stigma of cursed cities.

This talk presents the main findings of the collective work Cursing the city. A comparative socio-history of denunciations of urban corruption (Presses universitaires du Septentrion, Villeneuve d'Ascq, 2021, with Nicolas Maisetti). The volume offers a comparative social history of the invention and consolidation of the bad reputation of stigmatised and cursed cities. Drawing on sociological, historical and political studies, different periods are explored (from the late nineteenth century to the present day) in different European and North American urban contexts: New York, Boston and Chicago in the United States, Glasgow in the United Kingdom, Montreal in Canada, Naples in Italy and above all Marseille in France. In discussing these cases, the seminar will provide an opportunity to reflect on the processes of denunciation and indictment of corruption, which result in the full-fledged stigmatisation of cities considered to be corrupt and corrupting.

Cesare Mattina is a sociologist at the Centre méditerranéen de Sociologie, science politique et Histoire (MESOPOLHIS) of the CNRS-AMU-science po Aix. His research focuses on city government and power coalitions between urban social groups, as well as the rhetoric and actors involved in denouncing phenomena of public impropriety (clientelism, corruption, favouritism, mismanagement, etc.). In 2016 he published the book Urban clientelism. Political hegemony and government in Marseille.