Making space for free subjects:Squatting, resistance, and the possibility of ethics

Anthropologists working on ethics have emphasized the importance of freedom for the becoming of ethical subjects. While some have therefore aligned themselves with the later work of Foucault, his earlier work has been identified as part of a “science of unfreedom” antithetical to the study of ethics. In this article, I suggest that the “early Foucault” can nevertheless be relevant for the anthropology of ethics, specifically by looking at contexts where freedom is not a given, but has to be actively created through the overcoming of conditions of unfreedom. Drawing on Faubion’s discussion of ethical subject positions, as well as Foucault’s work on disciplinary architectures, I discuss how subject positions, ethical and otherwise, are also and especially produced through practices of ordering material and symbolic space. Different socio-spatial orders can therefore either be designed to impede the flourishing of free ethical subjects, or to facilitate it

The Ethics of Space: Homelessness, Squatting and the Spatial Self

This thesis discusses the interconnection between spatial practices and the construction of moral personhood, based on the example of homelessness and squatting activism in ‘Austerity Britain’. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork with persons who have no fixed address in the West of England, I explore the connections between spatiality, embodied cognition and the moral construction of self and other. Because bodies are spatial objects, embodied cognition is necessarily spatial – ‘human beings are spatial beings’. Moral personhood is therefore also and especially spatially constructed, most importantly through metaphors of ‘inside’ vs. ‘outside’. Drawing on cognitive anthropology and psychoanalysis, I identify two distinct models of the self informed by spatial metaphors, which I refer to as the ‘territorial self’ and the ‘spatial self’. These cognitive models, and the types of relations between self and other they imply, come to inform the construction of distinct spatial configurations which can be observed from a small scale – for example an individual ‘home’ – to a large scale, e.g. the territorial nation state. The territorial self corresponds to a ‘moral space’ characterised by notions of securisation, defensible boundaries and a dual mode of exclusion and internment that produces (racialised and gendered) ‘spatial others’. The spatial self, on the other hand, implies an ethical stance that takes seriously the spatial component of embodiment, and thus the vulnerability of the self to the absence of shelter, understood as the minimum amount of safe space – within and without the body – that embodied persons need in order to physically, cognitively and socially function. On this basis, I argue that homelessness can be understood as the result of multi-layered social processes based in a pervasive logic of territoriality. ‘The homeless person’ is characterised by a lack of territorial entitlement that translates into a loss of moral personhood, often referred to in the literature as ‘social death’. I conclude that squatting, as a political and ethical practice, aims not only at the removal of an immediate material lack, but also and especially at the re-construction of moral personhood through a practical ethics of recognising and responding to the vulnerability inherent in embodiment

The Ethics of Space

Across the Western world, full membership of society is established through entitlements to space, formalized in the institutions of property and citizenship. Those without such entitlements thus become less than fully human, as they struggle to find a place where they can symbolically and physically exist. The Ethics of Space is an unprecedented account from an anthropologist who accidentally found herself homeless, studying what happens when homeless people organize to occupy abandoned properties. Set against the backdrop of economic crisis, austerity, and a disintegrating British state, Steph Grohmann describes a flourishing squatter community in the city of Bristol, and its eventual outlawing by this state. Contrary to a mainstream discourse that seeks to divide squatters into the ‘deserving’ homeless and ‘undeserving’ activists, Grohmann shows that squatters may in fact be homeless people who, choose to challenge property and the State

The Ethics of Space

Across the Western world, full membership of society is established through entitlements to space, formalized in the institutions of property and citizenship. Those without such entitlements thus become less than fully human, as they struggle to find a place where they can symbolically and physically exist. The Ethics of Space is an unprecedented account from an anthropologist who accidentally found herself homeless, studying what happens when homeless people organize to occupy abandoned properties. Set against the backdrop of economic crisis, austerity, and a disintegrating British state, Steph Grohmann describes a flourishing squatter community in the city of Bristol, and its eventual outlawing by this state. Contrary to a mainstream discourse that seeks to divide squatters into the ‘deserving’ homeless and ‘undeserving’ activists, Grohmann shows that squatters may in fact be homeless people who, choose to challenge property and the State

Exploring the factors that influence harmful alcohol use through the refugee journey: a qualitative study.

This report from Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems (SHAAP) and the University of Edinburgh School of Health in Social Science explores the factors influencing harmful alcohol use through the refugee journey. Drawing on interviews with people with current experience of seeking asylum in the UK, the report sheds light on a little understood topic, and highlights how refugees and asylum seekers who do experience harmful alcohol use in the UK do not arrive with these issues, but rather develop them as a result of destitution, or being placed under a condition of 'No Recourse to Public Funds' (NRPF). The report also finds that the prohibition of work and paid employment while people wait for their asylum claim to be determined contributes to mental ill-health and a sense of de-personalisation, while long waiting times, social isolation, boredom and poverty contribute to harmful drinking. Participants identified the most important factor deciding between health and harmful alcohol use as the ability to envision a positive future, and protective factors to harmful alcohol use as meaningful activity, social support, and connection to third sector organisations, churches, and/or volunteer organisations. Based on these findings, the report makes recommendations for policy and practice, including the following: That the UK government should allow people seeking aslyum to work and engage in meaningful activity while their claim is being processed. That when asylum is refused, people should either be immediately removed to their home country or continue to be given accommodation so that destitution - a trigger of harmful alcohol use - is not the immediate result of a refused claim. That culturally appropriate mental health services to manage trauma be developed. That education programmes for staff in third sector organisations are supported, so that staff can better understand harmful alcohol use among people seeking asylum and refugees

The Ethics of Space

Across the Western world, full membership of society is established through entitlements to space and formalized in the institutions of property and citizenship. Those without such entitlements are deemed less than fully human as they struggle to find a place where they can symbolically and physically exist. Written by an anthropologist who accidentally found herself homeless, The Ethics of Space is an unprecedented account of what happens when homeless people organize to occupy abandoned properties. Set against the backdrop of economic crisis, austerity, and a disintegrating British state, Steph Grohmann tells the story of a flourishing squatter community in the city of Bristol and how it was eventually outlawed by the state. The first ethnography of homelessness done by a researcher who was formally homeless throughout fieldwork, this volume explores the intersection between spatial existence, subjectivity, and ethics. The result is a book that rethinks how ethical views are shaped and constructed through our own spatial existences