Urban Affairs Review, 38 (Mar 2003) 4: 463-491
The American paradigm of propertied citizenship has far-reaching
consequences for the propertyless, as in the brutal
criminalization of the homeless. Activist groups, such as the
anarchist squatter organization Homes Not Jails, have sought to
challenge this paradigm through innovative techniques of property
takeovers, invocations of American traditions of homesteading, &
Third World tactics of self-help & informality. This study trains
a transnational lens on both the paradigm & its subversions.
Posing Third World questions of the First World, the author seeks
to unsettle the normalized hierarchy of development &
underdevelopment & explores lessons that can be learned from
different modes of shelter struggles