Feeling at Home: Transforming the Politics of Housing

(Hardback)

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Description

Housing is not only about bricks and mortar; the home is where our hopes and dreams play out. Housing is at the heart of much of our lives. It is where we rest, eat, relax. Having a home is essential for our long-term survival, as well as our day-to-day wellbeing. Without a stable place to call home, people tend to experience mental and physical health issues, and often premature death. Housing also has a central role in ideologies about what it means to live a good and dignified life.

Feeling at Home grapples with the emotional questions that surround housing, from domestic labour, privacy, ownership and health. Alva Gotby proposes a new approach for the housing movement, which is ultimately about more than just creating more publicly owned housing it is about revolutionising our everyday lives and labours.

Reviews

This is an insightful and necessary book by one of the most promising feminist thinkers working today. The analysis is sharp, accessible, and timely. The short, punchy chapters never outstay their welcome, and there is a wonderful diversity of approach which is impressive in such a short book. Feeling at Home is a vital resource for anybody interested in the ways we organise our domestic lives. -- Helen Hester, author of Xenofeminism, co-author of After Work
Feeling At Home makes a compelling political case for something housing movements seem to forget: more homes, even very affordable ones, will not dismantle a fundamentally harmful and exploitative system. Gotby points toward a new horizon where housing can be a means of radically reshaping family, care, and society. -- Leslie Kern, author of Feminist City
In the best traditions of Marxism and feminism, Alva Gotby insists on asking far better questions. The result is this sophisticated, humane and exciting book.Feeling at Homeis a multi-point perspective that reveals everything that 'home' means, and - more importantly - ought to mean. It makes the radical seem obvious, and the impossible seem essential -- Nick Bano, author of Against Landlords
This is an insightful and necessary book by one of the most promising feminist thinkers working today. The analysis is sharp, accessible, and timely. The short, punchy chapters never outstay their welcome, and there is a wonderful diversity of approach which is impressive in such a short book. Feeling at Home is a vital resource for anybody interested in the ways we organise our domestic lives. -- Helen Hester, co-author of After Work
An important focus on the complex and multi-layered nature of home and the housing question, and why we still need to fight for it. -- Andrea Gibbons, author of City of Segregation
In her riveting new book, formidable scholar and organiser Alva Gotby tackles the personal and social calamities created by our continuing housing crisis. With elegant precision, Gotby shows how we can and must help restore the hope and vision necessary for the collective struggle for better homes for all, eliminating the widespread sense of powerlessness generated by housing precarity and instability. Feeling at Home is an essential resource for winning that struggle. -- The Care Collective, authors of The Care Manifesto
An important contribution to debates around social reproduction, care, the family and home. In this set of essays Alva Gotby sets new horizons for the housing justice movement, laying out terrain for discussion - and struggle. -- Isaac Rose, author of Rentier City
Alva Gotby's short, passionate, and incisive book forces us to see how the current housing crisis is exacerbated by idealized patriarchal and capitalist notions of domesticity that link private home ownership with personal success. Instead of simply calling on the state to provide more public housing, Gotby demands that we interrogate our very definition of the domestic. By breaking down the artificial boundaries that demarcate the public from the private, expanding our definition of the family, and reimagining the ways we mark successful adulthood, Gotby argues that we need bold new visions of architecture and urban planning as we endeavor to build more caring, connected, and contented societies. -- Kristen R. Ghodsee, author of Everyday Utopia

Author Bio

Alva Gotby is a writer and organiser living in London. Her first book, They Call It Love, was published by Verso in 2023. She holds a PhD in Media Studies from the University of West London and an MA in Philosophy and Contemporary Critical Theory from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University. She has written on feminist theory, social reproduction, housing, emotions, and family, and is active in struggles to abolish prisons and landlords.