Homescapes make the world we live in? A multi-sited study to unpack more-than-human homes in the urban South

Introduction

Global South cities have managed public services through socio-technical configurations that provide differentiated alternatives depending on social position. Populations living in low-income neighbourhoods, which in the South accounts for 60–70% of urban housing, seldom have regular access to piped water. They rely on small-scale providers, rain harvesting, and other arrangements.

Knowledge Gaps

Nevertheless, we do not know much about what happens once the water is transported/stored inside patios, kitchens, and other domestic spaces. This is a broader trend: we know little about the socio-ecological life within low-income homes in the urban South. This is despite the fact that it is in these homes that many of the processes sustaining life in the city take place.

Research Question

The question of how socio-ecological processes unfold within these homes is open and pressing. Especially considering the fact that Global South cities are home to the majority of residents worldwide, if we do not understand how the majority live their intimate daily routines, we cannot aspire to build inclusive, sustainable futures.

Project Overview

HOMESCAPES follows water, as it is essential for sustaining everyday life, and goes beyond it into other material and atmospheric components of the home. Stored (stagnant) waters are never only water but are also home to communities of organisms such as bacteria and mosquitoes that eventually continue their lives outside of water.

Concept of Homescape

The concept of homescape is proposed to denote a produced place in which interdependent social and ecological processes unfold in and around the domestic, but are not independent of broader socio-economic power relations and ecological dynamics.

Methodology

Methodologically, this project will not treat southern cities as sources of data, but as sites of theorization in their own right. It combines multi-modal ethnography and water-quality work, approaches that are ground-breaking in building theoretical insights from a diversity of specific urban processes and contexts.