After the Ban: The Moral Economy of Property

This essay can be read as both a tragedy of neoliberal governance and a paean to the resilience and creativity of humanity. Reporting an ethnographic assessment of the impacts of Denver's recent camping ban on homeless communities, I build on John Searle's constructivist social theory to argue not only that undomiciled people construct homes, but also that they exercise rights to property. Part of a social order, people living on the streets find creative ways to sheathe themselves in home spaces. By depriving them not only of the stability of their homes but also of the social power afforded by property, this ban dismantles heterodox orders, which then decay from anarchy. Nevertheless, accounts provided by homeless individuals themselves demonstrate that primitive property, though always fragile, can withstand emphatic disruption: this continued resilience is seen in the webs of mutual reciprocity previously and subsequently woven beneath, between, and behind state apparatuses.