Housing and inhabitation: situated geographies of intersectional struggles
RC21 Conference, July 24-26th 2024, Santiago, Chile
Conference details: https://rc21conference2024.coes.cl/
Organised by: Michele Lancione, Margherita Grazioli and Ana Vilenica
Beyond Inhabitation Lab
www.beyondinhabitation.org
Three interlocking processes are redefining what it means to inhabit the planet and its cities: Rising and expansive urbanisation (+2.8 billion people living in cities by 2050); widespread unequal access to decent and secure dwellings (1.6 billion people currently living in inadequate housing, and millions violently evicted every year globally); and responses by local communities in the face of these processes (in struggles that often include intersecting racial and gender injustices, violent bordering practices, problems of climate change and its management, and other paradigmatic challenges of our time). In this session, we are interested in hosting cutting-edge contributions confronting these processes and questioning the intersection of ‘housing’ and ‘inhabitation’. How are urbanites re-doing inhabitation through mundane struggles against historical and contemporary forms of dispossession?
We are particularly keen to hear from scholars who transcend the remit of conventional ‘comparative’ urban approaches, and those who go beyond the rubric of Western literatures and approaches for registering and understanding ‘housing struggles’ (Lancione, 2020; Simone, 2018; Oswin, 2020). To discuss and appreciate the propositional politics of struggles tackling housing as a gateway for wider forms of liberation, a situated understanding of history, power-geometries and longitudinal forms of dispossession is required (Massey, 1994; Roy, 2017; Rolnik, 2019). We welcome contributors who propose works that are both grounded empirically and historically/geographically, and we will give prominence to those writing from the margins of Anglophone academia. Particular attention will be paid to works grounded in decolonial, critical race, feminist and queer approaches to urban and housing struggles.
Key themes of this session include:
I. Empirically grounded conceptualisation of the contemporary struggle for inhabitation
II. Historical reconstructions of intersectional urban housing struggles
III. Ethnographic account of forms of racialised dispossession and related politics of resistance
To facilitate meaningful conversation among participants, contributors commit to sending us full draft papers at least two weeks in advance of the conference. We offer help to non-native English speakers for production of their full papers. The papers in this session will be considered for a special issue in the Radical Housing Journal.
Instructions for submission of abstract
Please send your 250 word abstract as a word document, including your full name, affiliation and email address, to Michele, Ana and Margherita by December 31st, 2023. You will be notified in January 2024 of the outcome of our selection process.
Emails: michele.lancione@polito.it; Margherita.grazioli@gssi.it; ana.vilenica@polito.it
Sources cited
Lancione M (2020) Radical housing: on the politics of dwelling as difference. International Journal of
Housing Policy 20(2):1–17
Massey D (1994) A global sense of place. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Oswin N (2020) An other geography. Dialogues in Human Geography 10(1):9–18
Rolnik R (2019) Urban Warfare. Housing Under the Empire of Finance. New York: Verso
Roy A (2017) Dis/possessive collectivism: Property & personhood at city’s end. Geoforum 80:A1-11
Simone A (2018) Improvised Lives: Rhythms of Endurance in an Urban South. Cambridge: Polity press