Small Things in Everyday Places: Homelessness, Dissent and Affordances in Public Space

Abstract

In ‘a world that has been built to accommodate only some’ (Ahmed 2019: 221), how do those engaging in public protest or experiencing housing insecurity make use of the material environment? In this article, we examine adaptation of the built environment in four sites in Melbourne, Australia. Everyday urban places are composed of myriad ‘small things’ acted upon as affordances for survival within structures of silencing and dispossession for the urban undercommons. We draw from cultural, spatial and atmospheric criminology to inform an ethnographic method focusing on materiality, use, adaptability and sensory composition. In so doing, our research contributes to criminological understanding of the significance of ‘minor’ events, activities and encounters in everyday life by proposing that ‘small things in everyday places’ constitute potentialities for defiance and resistance.