“They were from the neighbourhood and listened to reason”: the terminology of in/civism and the difference between being in and belonging to the neighbour-hood

Abstract

In 2006 came into force in Barcelona the popularly known as “Ordinance of Civism” with the explicit purpose of promoting coexistence through the regulation of behaviour in the city public spaces. This article analyses the relationship between such bylaw and the growing discomfort of certain popular groups regarding an increasing range of behaviours in the urban space. After a decade, the greatest success of this ordinance has been the inclusion in the everyday language of Barcelona dwellers of the “civism terminology”, where the pejo-rative classification of incívico (anti-social) has become part of the usual lexicon not only of the groups promoting the ordinance, but even that of those groups whose behaviour it sought to regulate. This text analyses the origins and uses of “civism” terminology in the context of the city of Barcelona, including its patterns of appearance and recurrence in the press and its changing meaning. In a second part, the text shows how popular groups from the city’s peripheral neighbourhoods, such as El Carmel (mostly made up of internal migrants and their descendants), have adapted the terminology, using it to make a difference between them and the others who arrived later, who also inhabit but do not belong to the neighbourhood.