The Marginal Public: Marginality, Publicness, and Heterotopia in the Space of the City

This thesis explores the experiences of an urban population who are considered to exist at the social margins of society, but who paradoxically spend much of their time in urban public space. Often referred to as ‘street people,’ the issues they face, such as homelessness and drug addiction, become public issues. In this thesis, I introduce and develop the concept of the marginal public to refer to this population, exploring their experience of the city not through the lens of their marginalization but through their relationship to the spatial and social realms of urban life. I explore the ways in which the marginal public, through their visibility and presence in the city, are not marginal to urban life but deeply embedded in it. Their marginality is lived simultaneously yet in contestation with dominant ways of being. This manifests in the marginal public’s relationship to others in the city, as well as through debates about the placing of facilities that serve them which I explore through the unsanctioned supervised consumption site of Overdose Prevention Ottawa (OPO). Finally, through the concept of heterotopia, I explore the margins as places of otherness as well as possibility.

Grantor dc:publisher

Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa

Year dc:date

2019

Author dc:creator

• Wallace, Yvonne

Contributors dc:contributor

• Stalcup, Mary Margaret

• urban anthropology
• marginality
• urban studies
• publicness
• panhandling
• harm reduction

Language dc:language

en

Identifier

http://dx.doi.org/10.20381/ruor-23469

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/39221