The House as a Laboratory: Finances, Homing and Essential Work
by Verónica Gago and Luci Cavallero
pp. 82-117 Issue 16 (8,2) – July-December 2021 ISSN (online): 2539/2239 ISSN (print): 2389-8232 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14718/SoftPower.2021.8.2.5
Abstract
Based on the conceptualisation of social reproduction as a strategic sphere, this text analyses some of the central reconfigurations that took place during the pandemic as a result of the intensification of reproductive work. Taking into account research carried out in Argentina, it explains how household-based and household-driven finance reconfigures what we understand as domestic space. Insofar as housing policy, now central to real estate and financial speculation, is a key issue in social reproduction, this paper highlights how the violence of debt, focused on attacking the stability of access to housing, produces a specific exercise of sovereignty in the territory on the part of finance. Explaining why there is a change in the relations of production that have a privileged place in the sphere of reproduction (violently assaulted and rendered “insecure”) becomes a central hypothesis for understanding how the financial sector is able to exercise sovereignty over the territory.
Central hypothesis for understanding the ways in which care and teleworking are hybridised, income restriction and the emergence of new debts, increased difficulties in formal and informal employment and the emergence of new housing and informal employment and housing emergencies; and, at the same time, strengthening of platforms as service providers and rising internet and telephone rates.