Door Locks,Wall Stickers,Fireplaces: Assemblage Theory and Home (Un)Making in Lewisham’s Temporary Accommodation

This paper explores resident experiences of life in PLACE/Ladywell, a “pop-up” social housing scheme in London providing temporary accommodation for homeless families. Specifically, we consider barriers to, and assertions of, homemaking in this temporary setting through fixtures and fittings—a door lock, wall stickers, and a fireplace. The paper utilises assemblage thinking to understand homemaking within these time-limited and constrained circumstances. Despite their seeming banality, fixtures and fittings offer a material, politicised, and lively means of studying the attempted and thwarted production of home by residents living in PLACE/Ladywell. The absence of door locks reduces parents’ ability to maintain privacy and intimate relations; restrictions on hanging pictures and other decorative measures are circumvented by the use of wall stickers; and a defiant decorative fireplace establishes a sense of home in a temporary setting. Together, these objects constitute vital elements in negotiations between fixity and impermanence in temporary accommodation.     

America's Misguided Mission

In Democracy by force , Karin von Hippel provided a useful analysis of the mistakes made and lessons learned by the United States in using military force to promote democracy during the Cold War. However, more fundamental issues with regard to the intentions and consequences of American intervention are left unexplored. US policy-makers mistakenly believe that spreading democracy will itself enhance international security. Democracy needs liberalism to produce peace; indeed, as Yugoslavia and Rwanda illustrate, illiberal democracy can bring war. This article concludes that American might could be put to better moral use in preventing massive violations of human rights, rather than in promoting democracy.