Honors College Theses

Publication Date

12-2024

Major

Philosophy (B.A.)

Document Type and Release Option

Thesis (restricted to Georgia Southern)

Faculty Mentor

Dr. Paul Tubig

Abstract

In this paper, hostile architecture is examined as a technique of social engineering directed towards the unhoused. This political dimension of space is examined from the economic conditions that create a shortage of affordable housing, where the unhoused are produced through the contradiction of uncompetitive wages and hyper-competitive housing. Hostile architecture is indicative of a particular social orientation that allows it justifiability. Through the use of Giorgio Agamben's classification of homo sacer and Michel Foucault's theory of biopower, the situation of the unhoused is revealed as a form of both suspending the legal order and regulating bodies towards private interests rather than general quality of life. The growing criminalization, ostracization, and stigmatization represent a society unprepared to provide shelter as a fundamental human right and more disposed to endangering the unhoused. The essay concluded that the solution to the housing crisis must follow Henri Lefebvre's "right to the city," where shelter is detached from its status as a commodity and distributed according to those who dwell there.

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