Structural Marginality and the Urban Social Order.

Abstract

This article focuses on the concept of marginality and argues for its redefinition in terms of the fundamental principles that influence the developing order of the urban formation as a whole. It is argued that the concept should only be applied to those populations that are located at points in the urban social order where contradictory and opposing principles underlying urban social and economic organization intersect. The argument develops in relation to two shanty areas in Kabwe, Zambia, and traces their emerging social order and the political participation of their residents over a period of 40 years. town/' as a descriptive label, identifies a broad spectrum of urban residence forms, from the relatively small clusters of substandard dwellings usually built by the occupants themselves to the larger agglomerations of tightly packed dwellings, also self-built: the bustees of Delhi, the barrios paracaidistas of Mexico City, the favelas of Rio, the gecekondu of Ankara, and so on. In addition, the label is applied to such housing that develops on the fringe of urban concentrations and that is often, but not necessarily, physically distanced and separated from them. The populations of shanty towns are frequently depicted as having a high degree of independence of the local urban administrative authorities and as having arisen independently of those authorities charged with the 'control' of local building and planning (Turner 1968). Shanty towns are part Df the general and expanding phenomenon of uncontrolled urban settlement (Turner 1968; Stren 1975) of third world towns and cities. The populations of »hanty towns, despite some cross-national variations in their social characteristics

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