ABSTRACT
There is a history of imaginary geographies which cast minorities, ‘imperfect’ people, and a list of others who are seen to pose a threat to the dominant group in society as polluting bodies or folk devils who are then located ‘elsewhere’. This ‘elsewhere’ might be nowhere, as when genocide or the moral transformation of a minority like prostitutes are advocated, or it might be some spatial periphery, like the edge of the world or the edge of the city. In constructing these geographies, the imagery discussed in Chapter 2 is drawn on to characterize both people and places, reflecting the desire of those who feel threatened to distance themselves from defiled people and defiled places. Thus, values associated with conformity or authoritarianism are expressed in maps which relegate others to places distant from the locales of the dominant majority. Images of others in the mind, in literature and other media may, however, inform practice such as the isolation of Gypsies on local authority sites in Britain or the exclusion of children from adult spaces. There may be important connections between these fantasies and the exercise of power. I will trace some of these ideas about the constitution of social space according to which some groups or peoples are deemed not to belong over a long historical time period in order to demonstrate their persistence. Portrayals of minorities as defiling and threatening have for long been used to order society internally and to demarcate the boundaries of society, beyond which lie those who do not belong. To demonstrate this point, I will make references both to political discourse in a number of historical periods and to some fictional narratives which mirror social practice. One informs the other.
