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

Projektbeschreibung

Wasserprobleme im Wohnungssektor des Globalen Südens

In den Städten des Globalen Südens stehen schätzungsweise 70 % des städtischen Wohnungssektors vor einer entscheidenden Herausforderung: dem begrenzten Zugang zu Leitungswasser. In Stadtteilen mit niedrigem Einkommen sind die Menschen oft auf verschiedene Wasserquellen angewiesen. Über die sozialökologische Dynamik in diesen Wohnungen ist jedoch wenig bekannt. In diesem Zusammenhang befasst sich das Team des ERC-finanzierten Projekts HOMESCAPES mit dieser Wissenslücke und konzentriert sich auf den Weg des Wassers über den Transport hinaus, um das sozialökologische Leben in Haushalten mit geringem Einkommen auf umfassendere Weise zu untersuchen. Anhand der Kombination aus multimodaler Ethnografie und Wasserqualitätsforschung wird projektintern das komplizierte Zusammenspiel sozialer, ökologischer und wirtschaftlicher Faktoren enthüllt, die das tägliche Leben bestimmen. Im Rahmen von HOMESCAPES wird ein neuer Ansatz erkundet, der die Städte des Südens als Orte der Theoriebildung betrachtet, die für den Aufbau einer inklusiven und nachhaltigen Zukunft entscheidend sind.

Ziel

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. 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, despite the fact that it is in these homes that many of the processes sustaining life in the city take place.

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 and if we do not understand how the majority live their intimate daily routines, we cannot aspire to build inclusive, sustainable futures. 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. 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.

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.