Good housing and good care in times of transformation

Abstract This article explores potentials for good housing and good care in the current times of transformation. It identifies two imaginaries of habitation that offer different perspectives on good care and good housing and describes periods of historically changing, diverse and often contradictory developments as part of the dialectics of ‘improvement’ and ‘habitation’. It draws on cultural political economy to explore imaginaries as ‘mental maps’, which are intertwined with politico-economic dynamics; on Karl Polanyi to describe historical dynamics of improvement and habitation; and on feminist Marxism to analyse capitalism as an institutionalised social order. It analyses contemporary struggles for good care and good housing, exposing the currently dominant, allegedly protective countermovement. This reactionary movement is legitimised by a privacy-focused imaginary of habitation enabled through the market, the family and the nation while radicalising a project of neoliberal improvement. The resulting privatised and monetised provision of care and housing is attractive to transnational corporations, international financial institutions and propertied classes but leads to an uneven and deficient provision of care and housing for those lacking financial resources and perpetuates the gendered division of unpaid care work. The analysis opens up the space for advancing a relational imaginary of inclusive, sustainable and caring habitation for humans as social and bodily beings instead. Proceeding from this imaginary, an alternative strategy of place-based collective provisioning that strengthens the foundational economy and respects planetary boundaries can become feasible.