House Society : Life on the Margins of the Modern World

The world is in the midst of a deep and worsening housing crisis. It has caused rents to soar in Britain, millions to protest in Spain, and even a government to collapse in Sweden. Under a global ideology that exalts homeownership above all else, on every continent we see the greed of landlords trump the human need for housing. Yet we still think of housing as a symptom of other problems in our societies – of inequality, wages, or regulation. Award-winning human geographer Brett Christophers turns our understanding of housing upside-down, showing instead that housing itself drives these problems. Journeying across both hemispheres – from the scapegoating of migrants in Canada, the turning of Brazilian favelas into investment opportunities, to American corporations taking advantage of depopulation in Japan – Christophers reveals in stark terms how the relation between landlords and tenants makes all of our lives, and how everywhere renting exists marginalised in the shadow of homeownership. With incisive clarity and passion, House Society shows how different countries’ housing crises have been made, and how, in turn, they are remaking our entire world. But Christophers shows that we can still choose to make housing – and our world – differently.