Border disorder: On urban boundary work and crime in the divided city
| Published date | 01 February 2021 |
| Date | 01 February 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480619871623 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
871623TCR0010.1177/1362480619871623Theoretical CriminologyAharon-Gutman
research-article2019
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2021, Vol. 25(1) 127 –148
Border disorder: On urban
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boundary work and crime
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in the divided city
Meirav Aharon-Gutman
Technion, Israel
Abstract
This article offers exploration of one spatial aspect of crime in the divided city: the
disproportionate concentration of crime events along Jerusalem’s former socio-historical
border (known as ‘Green Line’) that is clearly reflected in a spatial analysis of crime. Offering
insight into this phenomenon, an ethnographic investigation reveals the manner in which
neighbourhood residents cope with crime by blocking entry to it from the east, thereby
reinforcing and reproducing already existing urban divisions. This second, qualitative layer
of research enables us to follow urban boundary work in action, which is important, as
focusing on boundary work (as opposed to borders) offers insight not only into divided
cities as fact but into the mechanisms, logic and culture that reproduce and reshape their
urban divisions. In contrast to hegemonic analyses that highlight the importance of macro-
politics in shaping the lines that divide the divided city, this article considers crime, and the
way residents struggle against it from below, as a central mechanism that reinforces and
reproduces the divisions of the divided city.
Keywords
Borders, class and race conflict, crime, ethnography, urban studies
The wall is located on the route of the international border. . . If there’s an Arab
in the neighbourhood, he will immediately be asked what he is doing there. You defend
yourself, so you don’t have to be aggressive. They know this is the framework,
like in America, where everything has its framework.
(An employee of the local community centre)
Corresponding author:
Meirav Aharon-Gutman, Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, Kiryat Hatechnion, Haifa, 32000, Israel.
Email: meiravag@technion.ac.il
128
Theoretical Criminology 25(1)
This article explores a key spatial aspect of crime in the divided city: the disproportionate
concentration of crime incidents along Jerusalem’s former socio-historical boundary
(Brantingham and Brantingham, 1993) (known as the ‘Green Line’) that is revealed by a
spatial analysis of crime in the city. Offering insight into this phenomenon, an ethno-
graphic investigation reveals the manner in which local residents cope with crime by
blocking entry into their neighbourhood from the east, thereby reproducing historical
urban divisions. Here, we highlight the process by which crime concentrates in boundary
areas, prompting local residents to take action to fortify the socio-political boundaries
between them and their ‘others’ and, in so doing, transforming them into physical bor-
ders.1 Somewhat surprisingly, this project of separation was led by the neighbourhood
residents’ committee, which clearly identifies with the right-wing Israeli political parties
for which unification is a pillar of their political doctrine. In contrast to hegemonic analy-
ses that highlight the importance of macro-politics in shaping divisions (Wonders and
Jones, 2019), this article considers crime, and the manner in which residents struggle
against it from below, as a central mechanism that re-divides the city thereby revealing it
as another mechanism of boundary construction.
The formation of borders along social boundaries that attract crime, I will argue
(Figure 1), serves as a mechanism for reproducing division within the divided city of
Jerusalem. In neighbourhoods with strong residents’ committees that fight for separation,
the urban pattern of crime materializes into physical walls that re-divide the city. The
same residents’ committee that supports and identifies with right-wing parties on the
national scale struggles to separate itself from East Jerusalem in order to restore the per-
sonal sense of security of those it represents.
Theoretically speaking, this study locates itself at the junction between crime-place
theory and urban sociology, primarily in its consideration of the overlap between the
spatial analysis of crime and the social contours of urban conflict. This article’s primary
contribution, however, is neither its account of the intensity of border work in cities,
which has been well demonstrated in the past, nor its highlighting of the spatial pattern
of concentration of crime incidents along borders, which the literature has also shown;
rather, its significance lies in the finding that the concentration of crime incidents along
urban boundaries leads to a call by residents to (re)build borders, thereby translating
socio-political boundaries into physical borders. In this way, the ethnography sheds light
on the paradoxical position of the residents’ committee, which on the national scale
stands for the unification of Jerusalem but on a day-to-day level struggles to separate
itself from the eastern side of the city.
Ethnography of the everyday reality of seam line neighbourhoods populated primarily
by Mizrachi Jews (Jews of the Middle East, Asia and North Africa), who immigrated to
Israel in the 1950s and have experienced poverty and ongoing discrimination, is ethnog-
raphy of the spatial ideology of the Israeli right wing. Indeed, many interviewees
expressed troubling, stereotype-ridden views of their Palestinian Arab neighbours. As is
frequently the case in crime studies, these views are distinct from the data itself, as the
foundations of fear are typically based on impressions, as opposed to the Excel tables
that consolidate the official data (Quillian and Pager, 2001). From a research perspective,
I determined that great added value could be achieved by delving into the daily life expe-
riences and logics that lead residents to adopt these positions.
Aharon-Gutman
129
Figure 1. Re-bordering the seam line neighbourhood.
The article’s theoretical first section contextualizes the study within two fields: the crim-
inology of place and urban sociology. Its second section considers the subject of divided
cities both as a socio-historical phenomenon and a theoretical construction, and its third
section presents the methodology that was employed to generate the empirical evidence
presented in the article and engages in a discussion of the limitations and advantages of this
methodology. The fourth section is divided into two parts: a presentation of the findings
supported by spatialized crime analysis, and a presentation of the fieldwork conducted in
the seam line neighbourhood of Musrara, which conveys residents’ views of and counter-
actions to crime incidents. The article concludes with a discussion of the study’s findings.
Theoretical background
Border disorder
Theoretically speaking, our point of departure is the dialectical perception of borders not
as sites of separation but as zones of contact (Anzaldua, 1987). Borders evoke an urge to
cross them and are situated as a means of organizing encounters under new social and
130
Theoretical Criminology 25(1)
legal codes. This approach views the border construction process as an expression not
only of a political layout but also of normative, cultural and economic context (Hirschfield
et al., 2014).
The primary function of the word ‘disorder’ is its role as a distinguishing concept—
that is, a term created solely to designate the opposite of order. Comaroff and Comaroff
(2007: 134) argue that ‘violence and the law, the lethal and the legal, constitute one
another’. Order and disorder are, in short, mutually constitutive.
Sociologists and anthropologists who have studied the border mechanism (Zerubavel,
1981) have also noted the role of line-marking as a means of assigning meaning, rather
than as a mechanism of exclusion, and call for understanding border construction as a
key to the creation of social order. When we study the way in which people distinguish—
or draw lines—we also learn how they assign meaning (Zerubavel, 1981: 3). For this
reason, border and disorder, and particularly the manner in which the two are linked,
require critical examination. According to Sennett (1971: 9), the basis of the aspiration
for social order is ‘the search for purity’—that is, modern man’s desire to perceive the
social world and himself ‘by pushing away the dirt’ (Sibley, 1995: 14).
As noted in the introduction, the present study’s contribution lies primarily in its docu-
mentation and analysis of urban borders ‘in action’ as opposed to boundaries as ‘social facts’.
The notion of ‘boundary work’ (Gazit, 2010) illuminates the strategies that group members
employ when constructing symbolic divisions between in-group and out-group (Cornell and
Hartmann, 2006). Put differently, boundary work enables us to grasp more clearly how divi-
sions are actually carried out (Lamont and Molnar, 2002: 168). Analyses of border construc-
tion layouts are crucial to an understanding of social order (Sibley, 1995: 72).
The main trend in current research in this field focuses on the links among the neo-
liberal economy, widening socio-spatial gaps, the creation of urban borders, the eradica-
tion of public space and intensifying city violence (Caldeira, 1996; Davis, 1992). Some
other scholars, who have also depicted the link between city...
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