{"id":47,"date":"2018-12-20T10:23:08","date_gmt":"2018-12-20T15:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010-spring-2018\/?page_id=47"},"modified":"2019-05-03T12:20:33","modified_gmt":"2019-05-03T16:20:33","slug":"log-10","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010a-spring-2019-bmorande\/data-collection-logs\/log-10\/","title":{"rendered":"May 1: Research Log #6 – Paper Outline & Class Material"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reflection & Data:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Upon reviewing my research blogs and reading notes, I decided that I had acquired sufficient material to begin writing the final paper. As of now, I have drafted a preliminary outline, which flows as follows. After presenting a brief history of informal housing in the United States since the 1970s, I state my study questions, emphasizing their potential importance in both reconceiving squatting communities and suggesting future policy recommendations. Thereafter, I elaborate upon my theoretical framework, establishing squatting as a tactic of makeshift urbanism that evades formal definition and instead capitalizes upon manifest opportunities, often through subaltern infrapolitics. In this section, I assess prior scholarship to develop a unique analytical lens that assesses how squatting communities might reimagine neoliberal subjectivities of a \u201cright to the city,\u201d as well as propertied citizenship and participatory governance. Next, I summarize my principal conclusions before applying such theory to several region-specific case studies: New York; Detroit; and Seattle, in that order. I then discuss alternative practices of \u2018home\u2019 in the context of the recent Occupy Movement, which widely legitimized squatting as a political strategy, thus further blurring public-private boundaries. Finally, I plan to conclude the project by accentuating the need to denaturalize neoliberalism\u2019s presumed hegemony and highlight other imaginaries. After finishing the outline and preparing my presentation this upcoming weekend, I will succinctly capture these core arguments in a brief abstract.<\/p>\n

In addition to planning my paper this past week, I revisited material from SOC 3010 and previous courses, hoping to incorporate more comprehensive theoretical terminology. First, I reexamined how neoliberalism naturalizes inequity, such as lack of affordable housing, by reifying certain ideals of governance. As Michel Foucault (2008) argues, neoliberalism does not simply entail destructive consequences in the Marxist sense, but rather productively creates new modes of governmentality. As a \u201cnormative order of reason,\u201d neoliberalism constructs a novel subject of \u201crationality\u201d who, as an \u201centrepreneur of the self,\u201d must augment their own human capital (Brown 2015:50-54). Wendy Brown (2015) proposes that this concept reimagines the state as responsible to market growth but not to capital\u2019s \u201cexchange\u201d (access), \u201cdistribution\u201d (equality), or \u201ccollateral damages\u201d (social, environmental, and political; 68). Conceiving of poverty as a personal deficit, mainstream neoliberal discourse thus \u201cmoralizes\u201d individuals to adopt \u201cstrategies of self-investment\u201d to survive, ultimately \u201cblaming\u201d those unable to thrive (Brown 2015:130-34).<\/p>\n

Accordingly, neoliberalism configures new social contracts, or rather citizenships, between the state and populace; although, I hesitate to frame my analysis of squatting as such. Echoing Marcia Ochoa (2008), I do not believe that the notion of citizenship sufficiently captures the nuanced forms of control and resistance that affect individuals\u2019 lives, which often occur outside the guise of the state, as with infrapolitics. Furthermore, a discussion of citizens\u2019 rights subtly renders civil protections and guarantees conditional upon documented status \u2013 an idea that I outright reject. Nevertheless, since I assess makeshift urbanism as partly informed by municipal regulations and law enforcement, citizenship (as both a formal legal category and informal set of relations) aptly applies here. However, I do not define citizenship solely as a political structure that grants rights (i.e. civil protections), but also as an affective one that facilitates identities of belonging. These two apparatuses overlap to construct \u201ca subject of rights,\u201d based not necessarily upon legal documentation but on conformance with standards of a \u201cgood citizen\u201d (Ochoa 2008:156-9).<\/p>\n

Such a framework applies to propertied citizenship and neoliberal conceptions of a right to the city, whereby urban spaces of \u201cidentity formation\u201d and sociability depend upon economic capital \u2013 mainly private property (Sparks 2012:1514). Yet, this concept of citizenship also functions in squatting settlements, informing flexible norms of collective governance, as with the \u201ccampzenship\u201d of Seattle\u2019s tent cities. Recognizing these other constructions of social contracts will serve as a foundation to my paper, as will acknowledging the countless motivations for and manifestations of squatting. Such theoretical \u2018dirtiness\u2019 seeks \u201cnot to subsume, but to clarify\u201d my study subject, permitting a multiplicity of concrete realities (Connell 2007:207). This investigation aims to conceptualize such alternatives and, as a result, destabilize neoliberalism\u2019s accepted hegemony. As dialectical materialism contends, both society and history develop through power struggles, implying that distinct subjectivities not only exist but successfully resist normative ideals (Mills 2000). Without trivializing the precariousness of informal housing, I hope to deconstruct the \u201canalytical bifurcation\u201d that reinforces capitalism\u2019s totalizing nature and instead emphasize the \u201cinteractional constitution\u201d of practices that permit other forms of empowerment (Go 2013:28). Rejecting neoliberalism as \u201cthe only major force in contemporary life,\u201d this paper will highlight such subaltern \u201crelation[s] to power\u201d (Gibson-Graham 2006:2, 6) and reimagine new opportunities for social justice.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bibliography:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brown, Wendy. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism\u2019s Stealth Revolution<\/em>. Cambridge: MIT Press.<\/p>\n

Connell, Raewyn. 2007. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science<\/em>. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.<\/p>\n

Foucault, Michel. 2008.\u00a0The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Coll\u00e8ge de France, 1978-1979<\/em>. Ed. Michel Senellart & Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.<\/p>\n

Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2006. A Postcapitalist Politics<\/em>. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.<\/p>\n

Go, Julian. 2013. \u201cFor a postcolonial sociology.\u201d Theoretical Sociology<\/em>, 42:25\u201355.<\/p>\n

Mills, C. Wright. 2000. The Sociological Imagination<\/em>. New York: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n

Ochoa, Marcia. 2008. \u201cPerverse Citizenship: Divas, Marginality, and Participation in Loca<\/em>-lization.\u201d Women\u2019s Studies Quarterly <\/em>36(3):146-169. Retrieved April 29, 2019 (https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/27649792<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Sparks, Tony. 2012. \u201cGoverning the Homeless in an Age of Compassion: Homelessness, Citizenship, and the 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness in King County Washington.\u201d Antipode<\/em> 44(4):1510-31. Retrieved April 28, 2019 (https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1111\/j.1467-8330.2011.00957.x<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Lopez’s Comments:<\/p>\n

Wow. This work is really coming along. Are you sure you don’t want to do a PhD? I really like the thought and nuance that you have put into your research project. I look forward to reading it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reflection & Data: Upon reviewing my research blogs and reading notes, I decided that I had acquired sufficient material to begin writing the final paper. As of now, I have drafted a preliminary outline, which flows as follows. After presenting a brief history of informal housing in the United States since the 1970s, I state … Continue reading “May 1: Research Log #6 – Paper Outline & Class Material”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":15,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-47","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010a-spring-2019-bmorande\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010a-spring-2019-bmorande\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010a-spring-2019-bmorande\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010a-spring-2019-bmorande\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010a-spring-2019-bmorande\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010a-spring-2019-bmorande\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010a-spring-2019-bmorande\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-3010a-spring-2019-bmorande\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}