Who belongs here? - Alexander's civil sphere

 

The photo above shows a large, bright yellow highway warning sign mounted on 2 large wooden posts, against a clear blue sky. There is also a fence that is barely visible in the bottom left corner of the photo. On the sign itself the word “caution” is written in bold black capital letters at the top. Below that is a silhouette of 3 figures mid sprint taking up most of the sign’s front. The man in front is leaning heavily in his stride, behind him is a woman whose hair is blowing in the wind from the speed, behind her is a child seemingly being dragged by the women. The figures themselves have no real identity and are seen as flat featureless silhouettes. The image moves quickly from left to right, the bodies are all slanted and seem to be in a full sprint, suggesting not just movement but urgency/desperation. The sign's bright color is usually associated with danger in the road, and the three human figures are framed as a hazard and something to be avoided. The chain linked fence in the lower left corner ties the image to some sort of border environment which is where this photo was taken.   

The sign was originally created by the California Department of transportation. It was originally put in, in September 1990 along Interstate 5 close to San Ysidro, California. This is  just north of the border between the United States and Mexico. The original artist was a man named John Hood who was a Caltrans worker at this time. It was created as a direct reaction to a real public safety emergency. Between 1987 and 1990, more than 100 undocumented immigrants were murdered by highway traffic, they would race across eight or ten lanes of fast-moving traffic to avoid Border Patrol checkpoints. Ten of these signs were put up to warn the cars of the crossers. The signs became useless after Caltrans built median fences and Border Patrol implemented Operation Gatekeeper in 1995, which pushed the border to the east more in the desert. By 2018, no signs were still up by the highway. Even though they were no longer there, the time between when it was put in  and its removal, the sign became something bigger than just a traffic sign. The Sign was reproduced, parodied, reimagined, and exhibited at the Smithsonian, and became one of the most recognizable and contested symbols of American immigration politics. The photograph was published by the Los Angeles Times in June 2017, documenting the last remaining sign.

In Chapter 4 of The Civil Sphere sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander argues that civil society is structured by a system of binary symbolic codes that divide all people, behaviors, and institutions into "civil" and "anti-civil" groups (Alexander 2006:54–57). On the civil side, people are understood as rational, autonomous, and honest. Their relationships with others are seen as trusting and their institutions are rule-governed and inclusive. On the anti-civil side, people are seen as irrational, dependent, secretive, dangerous, and egotistical. their relationships with others and conspiratorial, as in they are trying to get something and  their institutions are seen as arbitrary and exclusionary. Alexander's main finding is that these codes are not neutral descriptions of people but they are tools of power.By portraying anti-civil people as undeserving of the rights and recognition that civil society promises, dominant groups use anti-civil coding to taint their public identities and justify not including them. According to Alexander, this symbolic pollution is the cultural engine of oppression. He argues that a group must first be symbolically classified as a threat to the civic order before they can be physically removed or legally excluded (Alexander 2006:55–56). To fix this problem we need to look at the codes themselves, and recognize this in the civil side. 

The "caution" immigrant crossing Sign is a simplified idea of this symbolic process that Alexander is talking about. In the signage world "Caution" signs are used on highways to alert vehicles to potential risks, like sharp turns, falling boulders, and deer crossings, etc. The sign works as a strong act of anti-civil coding by putting a running family inside the same yellow frame. It shows these three human figures, a mother, a father, and a little girl as hazards and dangers to the flow of traffic. The sign doesnt show criminals or something threatening, but a family running together with a child being pulled along so she is not left behind. However, the "caution" frame turns the family picture into a sign of chaos. According to Alexander, the running figures are being coded as anti-civil (not members of the community to be protected, but a threat to it ), dependent (the child being pulled instead of running on he own), and irrational (running instead of going through the correct checkpoints). The silhouette shape of the sign also removes the figures of faces and individuality, turning them into a category. This is exactly how anti-civil coding works, it does not interact with specific individuals but instead gives a group of people a general symbolic position.

Works cited 

Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2006. "Discourses: Liberty and Repression." Pp. 53–69 in The Civil Sphere. New York: Oxford University Press.

Unknown Photographer. 2017. "Caution Immigrant Crossing Sign Along Interstate 5, California." From Los Angeles Times, June 14. Retrieved [write today's date] (https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-immigrants-running-road-sign-20170614-htmlstory.html).