I am sitting on the green metal bench. Edward^9 cycles onto the square and comes to a
standstill behind me. He remains seated on his bicycle and maintains his balance by
placing a foot on the bench. After we have exchanged our greetings‘rustig’, ‘rustig’,^10
he starts to scold me: I really gave them a fright yesterday in the grillroom. They
thought, who is that, is she from the municipality, an enforcer on the ban on smoking.
I gave the poor man a heart attack! I shouldn’t do that. Edward himself didn’t
approach me yesterday in the grillroom: he didn’t know if I was working or not, and if
I was working he didn’t want to disturb me. He had told them: no, no, she is a
researcher, but the proprietor was really scared. Everybody had to smoke outside. He
was completely nervous, that you’d be from the municipality. All the ashtrays are gone
from the counter.I recall the waitress had offered me an ashtray, but having quit smoking a
long time ago, I had no use for one and respectfully declined. Edward
makes me realize that declining had not been respectful at all, but deeply
distressing.
Besides illustrating my insensitivity to my research field this episode is
also an example of a recurring event: the ‘street corner boy society’ on
Verdipleininvariably classified me as an inspector, as a controller, as an
enforcer. They put me down as a clear representative of middle class,
confident bourgeoisie, and my presence on the square could not entail
anything desired. People of ‘my sort’ that came to the square, were invari-
ably satellites of patronizing bureaucratic institutions of dominant society,
out to check up on them and enforce the adherence of regulations that
had no public support amongst this group and at most disrupted their
everyday practices and habits on the square. From their perspective, the
existence of these rules is not seen as a contribution to social order,
but as pestering, as targeted harassment, an inconvenience they had to
circumnavigate.
In the end though, however disconcerting the denial of my capacity as
researcher was for my own self-esteem, the dogged ascription by the field
of me being some kind of bourgeois controller led to one of the main
themes ascending from my research: the symbolic significance incorpo-
rated in and transmitted by formal behavioural regulations regulating
the usage of public space. I will explicate this later on in this paper
through the concept of cultural imperialism as defined by Iris Marion
Young.
First I will elaborate on the personal challenges presented to me by the
young male adolescents and how, simultaneous to connoting my bourgeois
status to enemy enforcer, they called my status as a female into play to
push me in a role I cared for even less. The ensuing embodied experiences
formatted my analysis of the social setting I was researching.
‘You Are Not from Around Here, Are You.’ 5