The Good Life versus the Social Life

The good life versus the social life Arendtian democracy in the public space of social housing Setareh Noorani setarehnoorani.sn@gmail.com 4278178 Final Thesis 01/19/2018 Tutor: S. Read Fall 2017-2018

Contents Abstract

2

Key words

2

Introduction

2

Condition of ongoing modernity and its contemporary issues

3

Labour and work: public space in social housing as a means of production versus a democratic embodiment

5

Case study 1: UK housing affordability crisis, foreign development projects, and corporate control of public space 8 Case study 2: Centre Village, Winnipeg, Canada

9

Thinking with Arendt: Social life and Good life

10

Countering sociality through Arendtian democracy in public space of social housing

12

Conclusion

15

Critical notes

16

Bibliography

16

1

The good life versus the social life: Arendtian democracy in public space of social housing Abstract Within social housing, the tension between the financial and social politics of creating public space presents a systematic problem against the democracy of freedom in public spaces.

It is a tension between social and economic capital, as witnessed in neoliberalism. Our current neoliberal society sees public space in social housing projects as a means of production, confining the inhabitants to a paradigm of productiveness. This in turn holds racial and class segregation in place. Social housing can thus also be seen as a frontier space, influenced by polarizing power-inequalities between the public and individual, given by the neoliberal situation and subsequent globalization. The shaping of social housing as a frontier space and the tension of public space in social housing happens unknowingly due to a paradigm shift in society. This is described by Arendt as the new social life taking over the good life, and by Bauman as sociality or liquid modernity. The creation of public space by institutions is not in pace anymore with new challenges for freedom or life as zoon politikon, as defined by Hannah Arendt. The definition entails society’s question of how to deal with managing collective multicultural affairs, inclusionary and transnational spaces. In this paper, the phenomenon of the good life versus the social life will be explained through case studies and accompanying theory.

Key words Democracy, Good Life, Hannah Arendt, Public Space, Social Housing, Social Life, Zygmunt Bauman

Introduction Social housing is rental housing, usually owned by the state or non-profit organizations working in cooperation with government. In the Netherlands the amount of social housing is about two thirds of the total amount of rental housing (CBS, 2017). After the economic crisis of 2008, the demand for affordable housing has increased drastically. This led to financial and social pressure on governments, while already having to transform with the ever-changing reality introduced by neoliberalism and its predecessors.

Globalization, technocracy, and transnationalism are effects of neoliberalism, themselves in turn leading to more tension by offering up (global) space as a means of production. In our current society, we especially experience a rift between financial, social, and socio-political aims in constructing public spaces, like those in social housing. By taking up a considerable amount of space within the city fabric, social housing complexes, with their public space, can be seen as frontier spaces. They are influenced by polarizing power-inequalities between the public and individual, and the difference of space as means of production versus being a means to constitute new collectives.

This paper attempts to provide a comment on the spatial influence of sociality and the various other manifestations of neoliberalism, in an era of increased tension between financial and social interests. It also will provide an opinion on public responsibility by policy makers, architects, and urban designers, who all are homo faber concerned with the constitution of (symbolic) constructions.

Zygmunt Bauman and Hannah Arendt are significant, but often overlooked thinkers. They provide a good observation of contrasts between the individual agent and the public agent in the public sphere. At present, the combination of Arendt’s and Bauman’s conceptual frameworks as a commentary on social housing in public space is absent. In particular, Arendt’s concepts of the 2

social life and the good life provide interesting topics of discussion and comparison, tying in a new dimension of self-organization and public responsibility with the public democracy. The specific scale focused on in this paper are the public spaces in social housing projects, often designed to stimulate a sense of community within a rather dualistic approach of financial feasibility of the project versus socio-democratic independence of groups.

In the beginning we need to define the context to the neoliberal situation and the contemporary issues it poses for public space in social housing. Secondly, we deepen this outline and look at new transnational networks, shifts in global and local power distribution, ambiguous ‘frontiers’ of power-inequalities; and ultimately a fragmentation of the public into individuality led by pure economic motives, or the division of labour and work. Social housing, essentially a form of welfare, is in this new context seen as a frontier area, where these divisions create a fragmented space. Welfare in turn is in itself a disputed terrain, inherently incompatible with neoliberalism, yet needed for its chain of productiveness. In this second paragraph, we look at a few case studies to pinpoint the conflict between the financial feasibility, plurality, and democratic space in social housing, against a background of neoliberalism.

Arendtian notions of social life and good life are interrogated, examining the tension they create in this public private/individual common binary, and the creation of collectives. In response to this, Bauman’s sociality is examined, tying this to Arendt’s concepts of plurality and democracy within the good life to understand further how we constitute identity and place making in public space within a new conceptualisation of sociality.

The concluding paragraph serves as an attempt to the implementation of Arendtian democratic thinking within the frameworks of creating public space in social housing, to come closer to an applicable form of the good life within our current neoliberal society.

Condition of ongoing modernity and its contemporary issues In order to get closer to defining the public space in social housing as an important intersection of clashing financial, social, and socio-political interests, it is necessary to define the contemporary condition of ongoing modernity. Modernity is understood through the lens of neoliberalism, and the symptoms it presents for public policy and public space.

Recently, the IMF admitted that neoliberal policies went hand in hand with “anaemic growth, boom-and-bust cycles and inequality” (Metcalf, 2017).

Our current society shifted from late capitalism to neoliberalism in the mid-20th century. Late capitalism “is a temporal and descriptive marker devised by scholars to characterize transformations in the nature of capitalism” (Ganti, 2014, p.3), and ranged from the 1940s to about the 1970s. In this period however, there was no established term for late capitalism and it was simply called ‘organized capitalism’. This terminology existed because of the Fordist framework of mass production, capital and organized labour (Ortner, 2011). Analysing Fordism along a few points following the Marxist ‘manufacture to modern industry’ paradigm will also help to sketch the later crossover to neoliberalism, and the shift in the exchange of capital and labour, the latter being essential in understanding the current transformations in public space.

‘Fordism’ is firstly a way to signify mass production using semi-skilled labour. This labour has been eradicated from any thought work, which is attributed to the task managers and technicians. The conditions for labour as opposed to ‘work’ are different. In the following paragraphs, we will further analyse this difference, how it affects transnational frontier spaces (Bonanno & Antonio, 2000, p.35). Within a nation-state perspective, Fordism is also “a virtuous cycle of mass production and mass consumption”. When this is extrapolated to everyday life, it brings us to a form of social life based on “mass media, mass transport, and mass politics” (Jessop, 2016).1

1

Another point of analysis would be the emergent strategy to govern through community, originating from regulation through coercion.

3

Neoliberalism, in contrast, is not only an analytical framework, or thought collective to understand labour processes and mass consumerism: but also a global historical process in itself (Ganti, 2014). The neoliberal occurrence is not a ‘monotheistic’ principle, but differs largely from one geographic context to another (Steger & Roy, 2010). The root of the neoliberal lays in the work, Trends of Economic Ideas, by the Swiss economist Honegger. However, it became a political and cultural doctrine with the definitions given during the Walter Lippman Colloquium in the late 1930s, with the aid of economist Friedrich Hayek (Becchio & Leghissa, 2016).

After the Second World War a group of intellectuals, inspired by the Colloquium, formed the Mont Pelerin Society to promote neoliberalism as a political-economic philosophy across several countries (Ganti, 2014). One of the statements made was that “individual freedom as observed in liberalism could only be preserved in a society that protected private property” (Ganti, 2014, p.4). Production of goods and services should thus be accessible amongst all and not concentrated in singular governmental institutions. The neoliberal market became an omniscient entity, converting individual values into “opinions; collectively, the market converts them into prices, or objective facts” (Metcalf, 2017). This inevitably also “weakened the labour unions […] and diminished the already doubtful welfare rights constituted under Fordist ideals (Bonanno & Antonio, 2000, p.44).

A different power-relationship between capital and labour devalued the human condition, into one only concerned with exchange of labour, and developing skills fit for said exchange (Richland, 2009). This has its own consequences for the public life. Labour became interchangeable, and subsequently no longer tied to a certain entity or location. As Becchio and Leghissa aptly observe: “In a society ruled by a neoliberal system, economic rationality has reached primacy” (Becchio & Leghissa, 2016, p.6). The relative price of labour and goods was able to be calculated across vastly wider distances, and socio-economic contexts, than ever before. The main cause for this change in perspective is the economic reform policies entailing “liberalization of trade” and “privatization of state-owned enterprises” (Steger & Roy, 2010, p.14), causing trade, and maximization of trade amongst entities, to become an ethic in itself.

Understanding the urban phenomena linked to the concepts of neoliberalism is a crucial factor to be able to deconstruct the problems which designers face in practice. The neoliberal society is not built on a polis principle- yet is a “universal market”, where citizens are “profit-and-loss calculators”, instead of carrying rights and duties (Metcalf, 2017). In this way, the government excludes itself from involvement in the society, which would distort the universal market.

Neoliberalism inevitably harms the ties to the nation state. The core principles of the free market value self-interest and competition as the greater good. Originally, a movement against statecentered ruling, socialist totalitarianism, and classical liberalism, neoliberalism has sprouted into a global detachment of a collaborative effort.2 Globalization came into existence in the era where late capitalism as terminology was still omnipresent (Ortner, 2011). Understanding of globalization and its ‘trickle-down’ effects will help to frame argument for the fragmentation and individualization of the public and social. This understanding may be transferred across scales, to the status of public space in social housing.

In the form of global capitalism3, globalization is an effect of the practice where organizations start to develop worldwide integration The root of this globalization also lies in an increasing technocratic4 world, stressing “knowledge, facts and figures while emphasizing efficiency” (Ribbhagen, 2013, p.20). Here the one of the largest progresses through is that “the world's farthest reaches [are] increasingly accessible to each other” (Bonanno & Antonio, 2000, p.44).

Bureaucratization appropriates this technology as a global means to govern, using technocratic reasoning and justification for neoliberal thinking. “Technocracy here should not be understood 2

Relationships between state and individual, and capital and labor indicate several paradigm shifts in interpersonal and intercultural relationships of the community.

3 Influential for the theory on long-wave shifts in capitalism was David Harvey’s Condition of Postmodernity.

4 In the Greek language, techne means art or craft, which would hint at governance through crafts.

4

as ‘rule by experts’, but rather ‘government by technique’ focusing on the procedures and content of politics” (Ribbhagen, 2013, p. 14-15). Technocracy also presents a gap in knowledge, further distancing the laymen in taking ownership over the public. This notion can be problematised in relation to the public responsibility of homo faber (policy makers, architects, and urban designers) in Arendt’s conceptual framework in the latter chapters of this paper.

Globalization also has a visible impact on physical space, not only through the implications of said neoliberal governance, but also due to the flexible appropriation of culture and representation, where connections become increasingly simulated. Outsourcing of labour and labour spaces to poorer areas of the world is an example of a negative consequence of this reachability, resulting in domination of overseas markets, expulsion of territory, exploitation of vulnerable workers, and unfair competition with local businesses.5 Competition over goods with counterparts all over the world leads to an individualized society that is increasingly concerned with production, encouraged by the promise of development. However, some of the free flows in technology, information, and labour in neoliberalism could be seen as positive liberating aspects.

These free flows result in the diminishing of importance of boundaries among nation states, leading towards intensified global connections, an urban and social effect also described as transnationalism, which also has a significant impact in the individual and communal perception of identity. The transnational networks influence how people conceive their identity as part of a whole beyond their nation state, yet still sharing specific traits as mentioned earlier with ‘flexible appropriation of culture’. “Such [transnational] networks are marked by patterns of communication or exchange of resources and information along with participation in sociocultural and political activities” (Vertovec, 2001). The new ‘transnational’ spaces formed by the redistribution of power are “frontier areas”, where invisible and multiple levels of decisionmaking are at work (Vecchi, 2017). These spaces can be geographically local, and are mostly defined by this culmination of policy, resource exchange, and public activity.

An example of these spaces are the social housing environments,, where the transaction and collection of labouring people as goods and physical transnational network occurs. Within these power-inequalities, coming from the diverse usage of the “frontier areas”, we can discern certain oppositions. These mark an ambiguity and tension leading to the ongoing individualization of public space even though we have more possibilities to connect and organize with each other.

Existing intermediate (symbolic) constructions (city, neighbourhood) are increasingly overruled by new constructions informed by new modes of governance and societal constitution.6 In this position of being both the creator and eraser of these constructions in favour for new ones, policy makers and designers alike (homo faber), bear great responsibility. It is needed to rethink both the position of democracy in public space and the role of community in the fragmented public.

It is apparent that neoliberalism, in its long wave, has presented both an increasing dependency on technology as a means of governing, and invasive globalization which introduces multi-level competition. The cumulative effect is the diminishing of the self-organizing power of the collective and its democracy. The artefacts of this democracy in the public are increasingly overridden. These effects have in turn implications for the public space, due to its increasing fragmentation in transnational frontier areas, concerned with individual practices of production.

Labour and work: public space in social housing as a means of production versus a democratic embodiment To understand better the ‘frontier area’ status of social housing, we need to start from the conceptual position of work and labour in the public sphere, and its influence on the individual 5

In this perspective as proposed by sociologist Saskia Sassen, globalization excludes parts of the world from active life and reshapes geography based on (economical) power.

6 (Symbolic) constructions or techne can also be seen as ways of the homo faber to make common (shared) space and aid the constitution of democratic public space.

5

and the common. In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt sets out these different types of activity of the human in daily life, inspired by the Greek polis, which amount to their possibility of political presence. Understanding this Arendtian outlook on human activity is crucial, as it sets out the foundation for her understanding of the social life and the good life in the public sphere.

According to Arendt, Western tradition has culminated in two opposing aspects of life, the vita activa, and the vita contemplativa. The first constitutes the world of appearances, where the human activities of labour, work, and action belong. The second is the contemplative life, the oikos, only concerned with ideal, the individual and inward contemplation, oppressing the active life. The current mode of transnational networks leads to the enlargement of the physical field meant as ‘the world’, as it not only being our direct surroundings but also a global perspective.

This affects the range of the vita activa and progressively blurs the line with vita contemplativa.

The dominance of the ideal life versus the real active world, accompanying neoliberalism, has led to the subordination of opinion, organization and the political. In the perspective of Arendt, labour encircles “the practices which are necessary for the maintenance of life itself” (Yar, n.d.).

Labour is mass-produced, and consumed quickly to propel this consuming. Yet, the aspect of labour making it necessary for life to sustain itself makes it the most tangible aspect of our world. Arendt calls labour the necessity, which equals us to animals. In addition to this, we can state that it is indeed the labour which enslaves us in beginning, but also creates the possibility for work, and thus also a certain extent of freedom to exist. This means that labour has an undeniable part in our everyday public life and space, although it also leads to fragmentation of these.

Opposing this labour is the earlier mentioned work, which adds another type of value to our life.

Work fabricates symbolic constructions that exist beyond the act of creation. These are upon creation relatively independent from “the individual actors and acts which call it into being” (Yar, n.d.). Acts of work entail the (cultural) institutions we encounter in our daily life, in turn bringing networks and spaces to life. Architects and legislators belong to those who bring these works into life. Because work originates from human will, it embodies freedom but also a vast responsibility. It affects the public, the community, and this makes it different from the individualized act of labour. Yet, work is also not completely free from constraints, as it is still a means to achieve an end goal. This tension is in parallel with the tension between financial and social capital of public space that designers and legislators face.

The rise of labour in the public sphere, also called the rise of the ‘social’ by Hannah Arendt, cannot sustain the quality of permanence needed “for a shared environment and common heritage which endures between people and across time” (Yar, n.d.). Social in Arendt’s terminology does not mean the same as the social in the common sense of the word.

Labour stems from the notion of production or even mass production in an environment of capital, and is done for some form of wage. “It has exchange value and is an activity, that of devoting time and effort to working for someone else, in some position of subordination”. Work however has “use value”, including preparations for labour or services (Standing, 2014, p. 964)7.

Within this spectrum of labour and work, we find the binary of the labouring man and the working man. Arendt calls this distinction the difference between the animal laborans and homo faber (Yar, n.d.). The labouring man is in essence also the man falling into the liberal exploitation of values like ‘freedom’ and ‘opportunity’ (Steger & Roy, 2010). Most economists treat labour as the main aggregator of value, subsequently presenting the labouring man as the only valid way to be represent the individual in the public sphere (Standing, 2014). This permanence of labour represents an ‘unfreedom’ in the choice to perform it (Yar, n.d.). In this way, the labouring man is also the marginalized man, derived from the knowledge needed to change its environment.

Typically, the labouring man resides in the frontier spaces of social housing.

7

It is important to dissect forms of work as far as possible into labour, to know where the patterns of exploitation and inequality occur in the public field.

6

The homo faber however, is the individual who calls the symbolic constructions, the frontier spaces, earlier mentioned into being,8 and holds a societal advantage over the animal laborans.

The working man links to the “right to practise” in the public, where the person has “right to do the work one wishes to do” under dignifying and self-regulating circumstances (Standing, 2014).

The idea of the productive individual or the homo economicus, is the neoliberal merging of the animal laborans and homo faber9. The definition comes from the idea that “people are isolated individuals whose actions reflect mostly their material self-interests” (Steger & Roy, 2010).

Producers of the commodities are subject to the will of the consumers and thus would need an objective arbiter in their transactions. The blind and anonymous self-regulation of the market in the public sphere is a result of this occurrence. The relationship between the common and the individual in our neoliberal society is thus “based on two simultaneous transformations: on the shrinkage of the social and the public, as well as the expansion of the individual and the private”, where socio-economic polarisation sets in (Pantelidou, 2017). This polarisation is partly to be contributed to the aforementioned opposition between labour and work, the emergence of homo economicus as the accepted constitution in the public.

Most neoliberal support systems encourage a form of ‘self-reliance’ in the life of the animal laborans as an act in the overtaking of the good life by the social life. This fraudulent self-reliance actually is reliance on institutions for the bare minimum and subsequent (economic) isolation.

The mentioned frontier spaces of marginalization (social housing) are places where this isolation occurs. Current day (financial) instability only adds to this atomisation, or as Bauman puts it: “the present day uncertainty is a powerful individualizing force” (Bauman, 2013, p.24).

The status of the social is thus a fragmentation at the level of individual, or mere ‘group forming’.

“The existence of individualism and community within the same policy agenda may appear contradictory, yet it is suggested that neoliberalism brings together these two opposing discourses through a process of what Nikolas Rose calls ‘governing through community’” (Cheshire & Lawrence, 2005, p.435). Economic liberalization processes are a good example of the growing privatisation of the public, which have introduced a growing pressure onto public democracy, making it subservient to the logic of economics (Becchio & Leghissa, 2016).

“Egocentric, normatively neutral behaviour had become an acceptable element of administrative and commercial life” according to Durkheim it would too “extend its effects beyond the economic world, and consequently weaken public morality” (Bowring, 2011, p.58).

Moreover, Zygmunt Bauman quoted the German sociologist Ulrich Beck on his view about the expansion of the individual in the public, or that “how one lives becomes the biographical solution of systemic contradictions” (Bauman, 2013, p. 105). This leads to an erroneous belief that society is to be blamed for the perceived individualization of society or consequently the individualization of public space. In turn, this misconception leads to disbelief in the power of society and community, which atomises the public even further. As we can see the responsibility of the working man is large in this expansion of the private, individualized space.

Following, society serves no longer solely as a way to define social class and groups but has a singular goal: “making a living” or rather said, monetizing security. Individuality is measured by the means of assets and ‘capitalization’ of these assets. An indifference towards stating one’s own priorities beyond labour is visible, and damages not only the liberal idea of individuality but the democratic freedom in public space. Behaviour and lifestyle has become equalized at the same time as politics has introduced the individual to a homogenized economic will, making them the homo economicus (Gordon, 2001).

Homogenization and dissolvent of community politics speed up the notion of forced consensus in community governing. It opposes the idea “of citizen as one for whom it is natural to join 8

These are not only symbolic, but also have physical counterparts originating from the thought processes and manifesting themselves in our public sphere, therefore defining it.

9 The difference between them is thus meant to be increasingly obscure in our society.

7

together with other citizens to act for community related purposes” (Wolin, 1992) and pushes the notion of forced consensus stemming from avoidance and indifference. Metcalf notes, “as a result, the public sphere – the space where we offer up reasons, and contest the reasons of others – ceases to be a space for deliberation, and becomes a (…) marketplace of ideas” (Metcalf, 2017).

The growing tension between a democratic embodiments of public space, public space as a community effort and addressing the needs of the community, versus individualized, commodified, and monetized public space is therefore especially relevant to social housing.

Social housing is one of the outcomes of a welfare society, in which the investment in a malfunctioning labouring man is hoped to eventually pay off. The norm of “the mutual engagement of capital and labour” constraints individuals in an eternal framework of marginalization through their trait of (non-)productiveness and at the same time intertwines those who buy the labour.

The housing affordability crisis in the United Kingdom stresses this power-inequality with home ownership out of reach and property investors and private proprietors abusing their positions, while contingent on the marginalized to be in a position of relative stability. This powerinequality is visible across scales and international contexts.

Cases like Centre Village in Canada show in real time this tension, and the awkward position spatial designers are put in while trying to insert their social ideals of community in a neoliberal contemporary, carrying out their responsibility as the working man.

By first investigating these mentioned case studies, we can distil a reality where the interest of the productive identity is put before the community. We can also impose theoretic notions explaining the observed difference between financial and social interests. In the following paragraphs, we will reach an alternative way of thinking about community effort, design, and legislation for collective commodity in public space of Arendt’s good life.

Case study 1: UK housing affordability crisis, foreign development projects, and corporate control of public space A new trend in the UK has emerged in the shadow of the housing crisis, on an all-time high since the boom before the 2008 financial crisis (Collinson, 2016a). Built-to-rent projects worth billions emerge, planning to house thousands of people in estates fit for a monetized individual security. As a tenant says about the building project, 2008 Wembley Park: “You pay a little bit more here, but you pay for a nice lifestyle” (Kollewe, 2017). Promises of a better life to citizens are paired with fashionable estates and spectacular renderings.

Behind these projects are large property developers, city firms, and equity firms seeing rental housing as a reliable income stream. Governments lend their support seeing these vast investments and building boom as a solution for the housing shortage and a way to ease the pressure on their responsibility. The government expects the developer to mark a minimum of 35% of the new built homes as affordable, yet whether this will be met is very questionable.

Wembley Park, a 7.600-home development, shows off a modern air conjured by the designers, among them Leslie Jones Architecture and Flanagan Lawrence, who often experiment with new typologies like modular housing and micro living in these projects (Kollewe, 2017). The ideas incorporate controlled communal spaces, with most of the buildings having lounge areas, roof gardens, a park and football pitches, often not accessible for everyone.

Oftentimes, the architectural and urban design lacks understanding of the community needs, and put these behind the imperative of the globalised networks in which they are positioned. This leads to marginalization of the poorer citizens seeking housing and adding insult to injury. The Spire London project by Chinese investors illustrates this, where separate entrances mark the parts of the building for the social tenants, and private elevators are reserved for the upper class inhabitants (Collinson, 2016b). The developers of the property stress equal access to communal facilities in the public space. In a time where large mono-functional tower development seemingly automatically alleviates the need for affordable housing, this investment was 8

welcomed with open arms. Yet, practices like these continue to hawk up much needed urban space, and transform it to contested and fragmented areas for the wealthier inhabitants.

In a research done by Guardian Cities it has been revealed that these pseudo-public spaces owned by corporations and developers have spread throughout the UK (Guardian Cities, 2017).

Large, seemingly public areas are thought to be owned by local authorities, yet they often lack the funds to maintain such spaces. As stated earlier, these authorities give up their influence over the financial dominance of the investing companies. Citizens think of these spaces as regulated by common law, yet these areas disguise themselves to be public and private security companies often enforce arbitrary rules to safeguard “acceptable behaviour”.

Asked for the judicial implications of using these spaces, most of the companies refused to answer and most local authorities rejected the request to provide more information (Guardian Cities, 2017). It turned out in the research that the basic right of conducting journalistic investigation was prohibited in a few visits and led to the guards escorting the reporters away.

Daniel Moylan, a London councillor, remains concerned: “Private landowners have the power to coerce us in what appear to be public streets and squares. If they have power over us then we must at least know what those powers are, where they get them from, and how they are held accountable” (Guardian Cities, 2017). The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, promised to make these mutations in public space ownership more visible and to enforce publicly owned public spaces.

The responsibility of the government to enforce public spaces ruled under democratic law, still not the same as democratic public spaces, is structurally left leave by these authorities. The individualization of space, by making it a private (luxury) commodity is apparent.

Simultaneously, the current social reality makes inclusive spaces and affordable housing a necessity.

Case study 2: Centre Village, Winnipeg, Canada The Guardian article of January 2016 (Moussaoui, 2016) speaks about the failure of “design social housing” resulting in discontent residents, and a rise in neighbourhood criminality. It formulates the Centre Ville design as a aesthetic failure, while it is in fact a failure through the reinforcement of a design toolset, which adapts almost completely to financial politics.

The image of the Centre Village neighbourhood, with its little squares and public plinth exudes surreal quality and apparent serenity through slick design. Peeling away the first layer, a reality is unmasked of crime and deserted public space, yet these are merely symptoms of what went wrong while conceiving the plan. It also sheds a light on the question what designer social housing can and cannot solve in terms of social problematics in our contemporary society, without understanding the role of the working man and the tendency of treating public space as a commodity, namely capitalizing space in m2.

The Centre Village area is diverse in its demographic makeup and densely populated. Affordable housing is a constant need for the mostly migrant families, posing a deeper challenge to the already difficult question of designing socially healthy neighbourhoods in gentrified areas. Most migrants in this case are Muslim, adhering to the belief that taking up a loan to finance a house is not permitted. The influential institutions in that specific community were the church and the mosque, often solving conflicts among the citizens. Along with a group of families, who had the intention of relocating to a new home, they set up a new housing co-operative where the “residents would rent to own” (Moussaoui, 2016).

The first part of the plan was to secure public financing for social housing which lived up to their wishes. The revenue would finance more interest-free housing. An agency was approached that primarily focused on regeneration projects as well as a young architecture firm (5468796 architects) known for their idealistic and fearless approach of housing design.

As explained by the architects, the initial stage of “extensive research into the matters of social, economic, political, and physical contexts - in the case of Centre Village the consultation (with both stakeholders and potential users) spanned a period of 2 years prior to design commencement” (Neufeld, Hurme, & Radulovic, 2016). They further planned the design 9

interventions consisting of a large enclosed courtyard with no gates and a public ground floor on this research.

Then the provinces funding agency, Manitoba Housing, pulled the money due to financial risk and earlier blows by similar social housing projects. The financial outlook of the project changed into a subsidized rental project. The housing co-operative went along with it.

Subsequently, the design made by 5468796 architects changed into a block with higher density: from the initial six homes to 25 homes. The shared public space of the ground floor became the last straw for the architects, not wanting to give up their ideal. To maintain this, the housing units needed to become narrower. It was explained to the residents that the small micro living units would encourage them to spend more time outside socializing.

The social aspect of the public space did never bloom, due to the disregard of the actual wishes of the community and the misunderstanding of this community as ‘individuals’.

Martha Thorne, Pritzker prize executive director was quoted regarding this matter: “It’s not enough to make community space and say, ‘People are going to see each other’”.

When the government changed the financial directory, a project was created for which there was no real need anymore. Ross McGowan, ex-president of the development agency CentreVenture, mentions, “A failure to understand the needs of the community took a considerable toll on the project”.

The project did not answer the initial question of housing a new co-operative in a democratically devised space and the coupling of assumptions and financial pressure made this project less successful than intended. The government took charge of the constitution of the community effort, in a way which is reflected upon Nikolas Rose as “a new mode of governing - of governing through community” (Cheshire & Lawrence, 2005). This softens the community into working with the government to reach individual (economic) benefits, an essentially Fordist approach.

This governing through community is made possible through the malleability of these symbolical constructions within communities. Simple rehashing of community “provides an effective answer to the question of why so many of the organizations designed to create ‘community’ as palliatives to anomie and alienation are doomed to failure”(Cohen, 2001, p.9).

Within the position of responsibility of homo faber, the architectural and urban design lacked real understanding of the present fragmentation of community in productive individuals.

By looking at these concrete examples in recent history, we can see the symptoms of the fragmentation of public space, the commodifying, and the governing through community defined, while outlining the tensions between animal laborans and homo faber in constituting a public, common reality connecting individuals. It also points at the diversity in statements, where “the social world is an arena were unequally equipped agents struggle to propose their version of events and what they forecast for the future (Jovchelovitch, 1995, p. 225).

Thinking with Arendt: Social life and Good life Further defining the conceptual framework of the labouring man and the working man, we set out to the argument of both the action as belonging to the zoon politikon and the worldliness of the animal laborans and homo faber being two crucial sides to the same coin of constituting communal effort belonging to the good life.

Arendt describes the new individuality or the commodifying of public space mentioned in the former paragraph, as the infiltration of the social into the public domain. As said, this perishable activity of labour belongs to the private life, or called oikos/social life. It being brought into the public lets labour oppose the space needed to constitute common institutions (Yar, n.d.).

Coupling the threat with the continuous “system of accumulation by dispossession” (Harris & Harvey, 1991) in neoliberalism, we can ascertain that the ongoing modernization constitutes a new reality where humans have lost touch with the good life and let it infiltrate with the private social life/oikos. We can explain the social life versus the good life by building further upon the theoretical distinctions made between animal laborans, homo faber and zoon politikon and the spaces they ideally inhabit following Arendt’s reasoning.

10

The animal laborans, inhabits the social life, which is as a part of this theory solely focused on production in the private sphere. The labouring man enables the working man to perform in a semi-public realm of ideas and ideals, made to foster institutions of our society, by removing the labour. In the same time, the working man, by existing and excluding the labouring man from the (intellectual) semi-public realm, exerts a dominance over the labouring man. We could see this already happening in the examples given in the previous paragraph.

This power-inequality is self-sustaining. Both the animal laborans and the homo faber however use labour and work to achieve an end which is to be consumed, be it biologically or cultural.

This is according to Arendt’s theory something exclusively belonging to the private life of the social life. Within the good life, Arendt discerns another aspect, the zoon politikon, which in her opinion brings us the utmost potential for freedom (Yar, n.d.). Labour is defined by necessity and work is, however a tier higher, also a means to an end. The apex of human capacity lies in its potential for proper action. Action presents an end in itself and is a necessity when especially encountering the other in the public domain using free speech. Therefor freedom is too a defining action. “Men are free...as long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and to act are the same” (Yar, n.d., part iii).

A danger is to see this acting in public as a way to negate the responsibility of politics or public action to discuss the concerns of the labouring and working man. Moreover, the simple eradication of labour from the life of animal laborans should not be confused with freedom. It is especially in our current neoliberal society a necessity to confirm the irreversible path of the social life in the public and to theorize it with elements of Arendt’s good life, which is the mentioned objective of this paper. This means not falling in the trap of a purist, archaic view on zoon politikon, however also not to follow the strict Marxist criticism of Arendt.

Incorporating human life in the twofold private and public binary is thus in itself already problematic. The concept of the good life and social life sheds some additional light on current contradictions in neoliberal societal developments. The “colonization of public space with the intimacies of private life” cannot be avoided anymore. Here humans have misty conceptions of what to attribute to the origin of their action and its consequence anymore (Bauman, 2013, p.24).

We thus need to work with our current societal environment and be aware of the possibility of Aristotelian concepts on private and public life and the way politics can interact with these.10 To regain influence over the public, individuals should organize themselves as “members of communities,11 […] embedded in networks of social capital, that prompt them to pursue collective strategies of reform for the good of all” (Cheshire & Lawrence, 2005, p.436). This correlates with the idea that the world as we see it is shaped by the acts of the working and labouring man, the responsibility of the homo faber. This puts the key for social change not only in the hands of the politically engaged thinkers, but even more so in the hands of the worker, as Arendt calls it, the worldliness. “It is not just that the ‘world’ is made of symbolic as well as material things – laws as well as buildings, stories as well as monuments and paintings – but that people have to share, value and take care of those things if they are to stand apart from, and last beyond the lifetime of, their progenitors” (Bowring, 2011, p.61).

A danger of these communities as symbolic constructions constituted by work and labour is the earlier mentioned softening of action through governance through community. Especially seen in the light of personal and collective manifestations in public space of social housing, which have become progressively monetized, neoliberalism nullifies social justice because of the insight that only productive individuals can receive attention in the system. Welfare is only 10

The welfare state as envisioned by Aristoteles and Arendt is an example, where they pose that it should not be based on justice rather compassion.

11 In the earlier observations of the liquefying society, transnational networks due to globalization, we can observe a slight problem in the definition of boundaries in community.

11

allowed to maximize the potential of said individuals to get once again operational in the system.

Ideally, action and worldliness complement each other in the public and help defragmenting the individualist public space. This realization will aid towards our argument on the responsibility of homo faber.

In this reattributed good life, public space is in theory thus used to amplify both collectives and individuals, functioning to constitute their democratic freedom through action and legacies. The public realm of the good life is thus different from the neoliberal ‘monetised’ public space, as seen in the examples given before. This monetisation is acquired by the commodification of space in goods as means to an end. Commodification of public space goes hand in hand with the individualization of public space, by the mentioned infiltrations of social life. The community has the quality of mediator between the types of public and the individual with economic potential, yet only in the case where it is neither a collective nor group. As explained, both of the latter inherited the fragmented quality of the productive individual, along with its corrosive emotions.

In this sense, we refer to Arendt’s dismissiveness of all moral sentiments in public debate, which should be part of the “life of the mind”, a statement in favour of private charity. However, Bauman’s belief that “resistance to social norms begins with care for the concrete other” might be a more positive starting point for a contemporary adaptation of the good life combining worldliness with action (Bowring, 2011, p.55). The care in this case should be a form of political action, not an incentive brought by a certain government from the sole thought of justice.

Homo faber is thus confronted with a yawning gap between the ideal balance of self-sufficient and strong communities in vulnerable neighbourhoods and the fact that these plans need to be financially feasible, or commodities, in the neoliberal reality we live in.

Hereafter, we look at present-day constitution of community in the individual/state axis. This in order to formulate the last part of our statement on involving the good life in the public space of social housing.

Countering sociality through Arendtian democracy in public space of social housing The introduction to this paper mentioned paradigm shifts in information, image, interpersonal and, intercultural relationships, which link to a fluidity described by Zygmunt Bauman 12 as sociality or liquid modernity. This is an important concept, adding to the tension between the individual and the community as the expelled other in a neoliberal society. Here the process of the productive individual ultimately loosens the traditional ties between social processes and their public notion. Bauman effectively poses a new way to look at continuities in modernity with those socio-spatial changes in mind.

To discuss the task of homo faber for democracy in public space, it is important to look at the contemporary importance of reinstating the community beyond the negative post-war connotations given to the word. Community remains an important construction of locality in the globalized world.

Bauman’s theory of sociality is inevitable to elaborate when speaking about the strength and weakness of community in this neoliberal individual/state axis. The notion in fact underlines Arendt’s warning against the social life taking over public space and her call for community as public and democratic right. This is at the same time a warning against the Platonic ideal of life, which Arendt partly adopts, being firstly a highly introverted way of experiencing (the ideal) and secondly an elitist view where some citizens are more equal than others are.

Bauman’s sociality or liquid modernity is a critique on the term postmodernity, which surfaced in the late 20th century, as umbrella term for many social transitions. Proposing this new term to 12

Being a sociologist who has witnessed a great part of 20th and 21st century, Bauman has published many works on the ongoing modernity and its effects, such as globalization.

12

shed light on communities in modernity, it carries the same question how social action and welfare can exist in a present reduced to individuality, which in turn fragments the public space where the community needs to function. As Bauman says: “The present-day ‘liquefied’ […] version of modernity does not portend divorce and a final break in communication, but it does augur a disengagement between capital and labour” (Bauman, 2013, p.25). The mentioned solidity weakens through the adamant changes in social structures, being a reflexive symptom of the era of neoliberalism and its institutions. Studdert states that “Within this mode of [neoliberal] thought community is a hollow shell, a ‘theoretical and performative stage’ for the enactment of rational unitary individualism rather than a space of relational plurality, constitutive of all forms of social being-ness, including individualism” (Schechtman, 2007, p.4).

This leads to the understanding that human existence is not yet devoid of ways to have communicative action and the way forward is to decentralize it into genuine community.

Again, the nexus institutional power-capital-labour seems to be the key in understanding the present disengaged condition in public space of social housing. Bauman hints on an accumulated apathy and impermanence of bonds, as well witnessed by Arendt in the social life. This statement on the social life and sociality calls for another and more realistic conception of public space of the good life in our current society. If the public should inherit qualities from the good life, what exactly would be needed for that?

The influx, visibility, and emancipation of several minorities in society have reached an all-time high in our current society. The consequence of this is an even graver imbalance between the impermanence and constitution of communal identity, which relies on clarity of the cultural experience of community. Minority discourse has surfaced especially in the West alongside the appearance of gender equality, multiculturalism, the transport of multiple identities into a homogenous society. Combined with the experience of identity fragmentation, the view of community has been reduced by the state/individual axis to ““mechanistic thinking” that presumes division, separation, and conflict in society” (Schechtman, 2007, p.4).

The central question of the integration and homogenization of these minorities strengthens this mechanization of single identity and belonging to one nation, overriding community into one amalgam. This is an unfortunate tendency, since Arendt states that community is needed to define the self and moral action.

To subvert this, the Arendtian concept of human plurality is needed, which is “the twofold condition of equality and distinction” (Gordon, 2001, p.87). The others in the public environment give the precondition to “recognize the uniqueness of ourselves and our acts” (Yar, n.d., part iii).

As Arendt puts it: Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men...corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.

While all aspects of the human condition are somehow related to politics, this plurality is specifically the condition - not only the conditio sine qua non, but the conditio per quam - of all political life. (Arendt, 1998, p.7) In contrast to Arendt’s plurality, the term in a neoliberal context became a mask for increasing disconnection of the state agent in favour for individual agents by the clash of welfare, affordability, and neoliberalism, or the phenomenon of governing through community. These hard forces have destructed the community into mono-perspectival collectives, and rid the world of communal reality and truth, which is in essence multi-perspectival. In this place of multiple shared truths, the empowerment of the marginalized animal laborans is accepted, beyond the simple expelling of labour. It is crucial to see plurality as the fabric that will tie individuals within a community, leaving their (cultural) self to co-exist with communal identity.

Actual individual identity is not the same as the fragmented identity we perceive; indeed, it is enforced by the public life, which is common to us all. This plurality allows inclusivity and difference. This insight would work toward defragmenting communities in the public, especially 13

the frontier spaces of social housing. Plurality is thus another part of the needed symbolic construction made by homo faber, characterizing the human condition.

This dissection and application of Arendtian democracy to frontier areas, like social housing complexes, should lead to ways to identify and theorize on violations in the democracy of these public spaces, inflicted by the economy of neoliberalism. We have seen in the examples given that these violations base themselves on the intrusion of harmful self, the distinction of public rights of the animal laborans and the homo faber, and the new intrusion of the homo economicus as accepted public, productive individual. It also draws on the fragmentation of the community into individualized collectives, which can be governed more easily. The Arendtian democracy brings us that the public sphere should mediate community interest, where the statement “"potestas in populo", that is, power comes from below, not from above” rings true. Zoon politikon is in the view of this paper less relevant as this type is unable to change the current unequal status of the animal laborans and the homo faber, and resorts to detaching them from partaking in the act of democracy.

The homo faber is the agent that brings symbolic constructions into the world, defining not only the intellectual, privileged spaces of knowledge, but also the physical space in between animal laborans and homo faber. We could see this intellectual privilege, ordered from above, already in the failure of constituting a new model for the Centre Village, due to the rigidity of normative symbolic constructions, which work in favour of neoliberalism. It results in unwillingness to understand the unequal equipment of identities. The constructions failed in constituting the public, because it was devoid of actual plural dialog, symptomatic to the private life. Worldliness is a crucial element to host action and freedom for both animal laborans and homo faber.

We can theorize that constructing a shared worldliness, common to all, as public life should be the core of social action. It is not based on mere justice, but out of understanding and care of communal affairs and the importance of identity. This physical and shared space is an aspect of public life, the arena for democracy, which should be formed in an inclusive way. The importance for inclusiveness is because of the permanence of the physical space harbouring symbolic constructions, such as community. It is the way for human life to transcend its own life span and to avoid the mentioned fragmentation of public life through neoliberal individuality.

Community is thus not a nostalgic concept, but needs to be reworked in the contemporary neoliberal society to regain the values of the good life, which lies in communicative action in the public. As Cohen states: Others have suggested that the introduction domination of modern social life by the state, and the essential confrontation of classes in capitalist society, have made ‘community’ a nostalgic, bourgeois, and anachronistic concept. Once again, the argument is based entirely upon a highly particularistic and sectarian definition.(Cohen, 2001, p.11-12) This reworking of community is not necessarily tied to the identification of boundaries 13 within mere rhetoric, but to the enlargement of the capacity of worldliness.14 On the incorporation of Arendtian democracy15, we can say that “changing the language of debate, inserting the values and vocabulary of the political realm in an effort to exit the economistic mind-set, is one way to begin resisting current trends” (Gordon, 2001, p.110). These forms of (radical) social interchange at the ground level are ways to liquefy the solidity of neoliberal institutions. It is needed for people to meet in the good life to actively discuss the “languages of the private concerns and the public goods” (Bauman, 2013).

13

It is also related to the identification of forms of social representation, which can be read in Jovchelovic.

This opposes part of Cohen’s definition of community.

15 Arendt advocates herself for a participatory democracy rather than a representative one.

14

14

Jürgen Habermas adds to this notion the idea that a “‘differentiation in the concept of society’ [is needed] in order to capture the “‘distinction between a social integration of society, which takes effect in action orientations, and a systemic integration, which reaches through and beyond action orientations’” (Bowring, 2011, p.59). Good life is attainable if it is defined specifically through the worldliness of symbolic constructions, if the current constitution of society is attacked from within and above by the acts of dialog. Legislators, designers, and other homo faber should be aware of not only the symbolic constructions, which form a tight code of conduct and unfair welfare within our neoliberal society, but also the malleable, transnational acts constituting freedom, which actually level the public playing field. Arendtian democracy in public space of social housing, or even other frontier spaces, is thus an ongoing project.

Conclusion The creation of public space by institutions is not in pace anymore with new challenges for freedom: the society’s question of how to deal with managing collective multicultural affairs, inclusionary and transnational spaces. Personal observations have sparked the questioning of the incongruence of the words ‘public’ and ‘social’ with the current form of public space in social housing.

Space in general has become a financial commodity, traded, speculated, and privatized. This has its roots in the way we treat people purely as labouring men, effectively earning their right for the public as the productive man. This might be in essence a Marxist view on the animal laborans.

Creating public space for social housing exhibits a tension between social and economic capital.

In neoliberalism, a different power-relationship between capital and labour devalued the human condition into one only concerned with exchange of labour and developing skills fit for said exchange. This has been a global occurrence. The new ‘transnational’ spaces formed by the (global) redistribution of power are “frontier areas”, where invisible and multiple levels of decision-making are at work. These spaces can be local, and are mostly defined by this culmination of resource exchange and public activity. Examples are social housing environments where the neoliberal transaction and collection of labouring people as goods and physical transnational network occurs.

Public space has thus become the place where the exchange of labour dominates the daily life and where the fragmentation of the community into easy governable collectives or individuals sets forth. Here the process of the productive individual ultimately loosens the traditional ties between social processes and their public notion. Zygmunt Bauman describes this as sociality or liquid modernity. This is why especially social housing, the parts of the city reserved for the marginalized and labouring, needs democratic public space as proposed by Hannah Arendt.

Although Arendt was a political philosopher, her theoretic approach to democracy in public space seems like a tool that can be used to propel socially sustainable communities in social housing. Bauman’s theory of sociality helps explaining the current challenge of constituting such a sustainable community through the changes we observe in perceiving information. Essential elements in Arendtian democracy are communal action because our society is plural. This does not imply a riddance of the individual, but indeed emphasise the importance of space and symbolic constructions in between individuals that mark their individuality. Action in public as a mediator is a necessity because we are all different.

An important corrective on Arendt’s theory on the good life is that action as politics, free speech, and freedom should be seen as ways to propel discussions in the worldliness of the working man and labouring man, ultimately leading to freedom. Legislators, designers, and other homo faber should be aware of not only the symbolic constructions, which form a tight code of conduct and unfair welfare within our neoliberal society, but also the malleable, transnational acts constituting freedom, which actually level the public playing field. Arendtian democracy in public space of social housing, or even other frontier spaces, is thus an ongoing public project.

15

Critical notes While writing this thesis, it only became apparent that these observations and the linkage of both Arendt and Bauman are mere steps in the right direction, yet they pose more questions, which only can be solved with renewed writings and discussions. The first issue would be the question of boundaries of the symbolic constructions and social representations of these. The definition of frontier spaces should be more defined, since transnationality brings a new boundary to work with, extending the community. Transnationality also influences the accumulation and appropriation of culture, again effecting social constructions.

Secondly, the symbolic constructions in between, which are the fabric of the emancipation of the labouring man and the responsibility of the working man, need to be investigated into concrete objects which constitute the tools of the designers. Hannah Arendt calls these objects techne, which make up the missing mass of society. The issue is then whether they can be objects of fairness and if we have surpassed fairness as form of justice.

Within the provided time and form of this particular thesis, it was not possible to elaborate on these points. Although, my aim is to practice proficiency and understanding in this particular field, thus to keep writing and endeavour a new paper after this.

Bibliography Arendt, H. (1998). The Human Condition (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Bauman, Z. (2013). The Individualized Society. John Wiley & Sons. Retrieved from https://books.google.nl/books?id=ivFAfmSxrF0C&dq=individualization+of+public+space& hl=nl&source=gbs_navlinks_s Becchio, G., & Leghissa, G. (2016). The Origins of Neoliberalism: Insights from economics and philosophy. Routledge.

Bonanno, A., & Antonio, R. J. (2000). A New Global Capitalism ? From “ Americanism and Fordism ” to “ Americanization-Globalization .” American Studies, 41(2/3), 33–77. https://doi.org/0026-3079 Bowring, F. (2011). Comparing Bauman and Arendt: Three Important Differences. Sociology, 45(1), 54–69. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038510387186 CBS. (2017). Voorraad woningen; eigendom, type verhuurder, bewoning, regio. Retrieved January 13, 2018, from http://statline.cbs.nl/Statweb/publication/?DM=SLNL&PA=82900NED&D1=a&D2=0&D3= 0,75,187,361,412&D4=a&HDR=T&STB=G1,G2,G3&VW=T Cheshire, L., & Lawrence, G. (2005). Neoliberalism, individualisation and community: Regional restructuring in Australia. Social Identities, 11(5), 435–445. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630500407869 Cohen, A. (2001). The Symbolic Construction of Community. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226036892.001.0001 Collinson, P. (2016a). Affordable housing crisis has engulfed all cities in southern England, says Lloyds. Retrieved November 21, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/mar/26/affordable-house-prices-engulfssouthern-england-lloyds-bank Collinson, P. (2016b). Chinese firm to build Europe’s tallest residential tower in London.

Retrieved November 19, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/05/chinese-firm-greenland-groupbuild-europe-tallest-residential-tower-london Ganti, T. (2014). Neoliberalism. Annual Review of Anthropology, 43(1), 89–104. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155528 Gordon, N. (2001). Arendt and social change in democracies. Critical Review of International 16

Social and Political Philosophy, 4(2), 85–111. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230108403351 Guardian Cities. (2017). Revealed: the insidious creep of pseudo-public space in London.

Retrieved November 23, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseudo-public-space-popslondon-investigation-map Harris, C., & Harvey, D. (1991). The Condition of Postmodernity. Economic Geography. https://doi.org/10.2307/143544 Jessop, B. (2016). Fordism. Retrieved December 18, 2017, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fordism Jovchelovitch, S. (1995). Social Representaions and Public Life: A Study on the Symbolic Construction of Public Spaces in Brazil, (January).

Kollewe, J. (2017). Build-to-rent – the solution to Britain’s housing crisis? Retrieved November 21, 2017, from Metcalf, S. (2017). Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world. Retrieved November 21, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-ideathat-changed-the-world Moussaoui, R. (2016). Crime in the community: when “designer” social housing goes wrong.

Retrieved November 1, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jan/04/crime-community-designer-socialhousing-winnipeg Neufeld, C., Hurme, J., & Radulovic, S. (2016). 5468796 Architecture’s Response to The Guardian Over their “Failed” Social Housing Project. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from https://www.archdaily.com/781246/5468796-architectures-response-to-the-guardianover-their-failed-social-housing-project Ortner, S. (2011). On Neoliberalism. Retrieved October 6, 2017, from http://aotcpress.com/articles/neoliberalism/ Pantelidou, C. (2017). Versions of collectivity in housing architecture: From the modern to the post-human. In M. J. R. Couceiro da Costa, F. Roseta, S. Couceiro da Costa, & J. P. Lages (Eds.), Architectural Research Addressing Societal Challenges Volume 2 (1st Editio, p. 600). London: CRC Press. Retrieved from https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781351652650 Ribbhagen, C. (2013). Technocracy within Representative Democracy. University of Gothenburg.

Richland, J. B. (2009). On neoliberalism and other social diseases: The 2008 sociocultural anthropology year in review. American Anthropologist, 111(2), 170–176. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01110.x Schechtman, R. (2007). Review of David Studdert, Conceptualising Community: Beyond the State and Individual. Transit, A Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the GermanSpeaking World, 3(1), 1–17. Retrieved from http://transit.berkeley.edu/2007/schechtman/ Schram, S. F. (2006). Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, and Globalization. Temple University Press. Retrieved from https://books.google.nl/books?id=RdjlzSI5zRYC&dq=hannah+arendt+welfare&hl=nl&sour ce=gbs_navlinks_s Standing, G. (2014). Understanding the Precariat through Labour and Work. Development and Change, 45(5), 963–980. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12120 Steger, M. B., & Roy, R. K. (2010). Neoliberalism, A very short introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.

Vecchi, B. (2017). A world unified by the golden rule: expropriation. Retrieved December 18, 2017, from https://global.ilmanifesto.it/a-world-unified-by-the-golden-ruleexpropriation/ Vertovec, S. (2001). Transnationalism and identity. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27(4), 573–582. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691830120090386 Wolin, R. (1992). The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger. Columbia University Press.

Yar, M. (n.d.). Hannah Arendt (1906—1975). Retrieved December 18, 2017, from 17

http://www.iep.utm.edu/arendt/#H4

18