Section 2.2 Concepts, issues, and biases in Shelter Design

Marino, Elizabeth. “Seal Oil Lamps and Pre-Fab Housing: A History of Colonialism in Shishmaref.” In Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground: An Ethnography of Climate Change in Shishmaref, Alaska, 45-60. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2015.

This chapter of an ethnography about a village in northern Alaska that is facing relocation due to climate change provides contextual information for understanding issues facing rural communities in Alaska. The author discusses how housing and related infrastructural concerns became vehicles for colonialism.

Pruss, Graham. “A Home Without a Home: Vehicle Residency and Settled Bias,” 2019. https://digital.lib.washington.edu:443/researchworks/handle/1773/44706.

This dissertation examines the use of vehicles as affordable housing/adaptive housing and the impact that criminalization of vehicle-homes has had on people’s ability to access resources. The author explores how many social support models perpetuate “anti-‘nomadic’ stigma” and “settled bias” and provides recommendations.

Momono, Christina. “Exploring Indigenous Peoples Issues Around Fair Housing.” Northwest Fair Housing Alliance. 2020. http://nwfairhouse.org/media/images/Native-Americans-Fair-Housing.pdf.

In this publication, Christina Momono gives an overview of the systemic issues Indigenous people have faced regarding their access to fair housing. Issues discussed include linguistic barriers, housing discrimination, poor communications infrastructure, housing shortages on tribal lands, and overcrowding, etc.

Jull, Matthew. “Toward a Northern Architecture: The Microrayon as Arctic Urban Prototype.” Journal of Architectural Education 70 No. 2 (July 2, 2016): 214–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10464883.2016.1197672.

In his 2016 article, Jull examines similarities between two arctic architecture projects that occurred in vastly different social and environmental contexts: one in Resolute, Canada, and one in Norilsk, Russia. He describes these two designs as examples of a “microrayon” (a Soviet planning concept that originated in the late 1950s) and examines how they may lay the foundation for urban design in extreme northern climates. The design of these projects has two main components: a wall structure to help regulate the local climate and reduce the effects of wind and snow; and an interior microrayon that provides housing, services and amenities to provide for the “social and physical wellbeing of families and children.”

Katz, Irit. “Pre-fabricated or Freely fabricated?” Forced Migration Review, ‘Shelter in Displacement’ issue 54 (2017): 17-19.

This article examines how the “architectural forms of emergency shelters and the ways they are created play a significant role in the ability of their inhabitants to deal with their displacement.” The author emphasizes the distinction between the ability of two shelter systems—the “pre-fabricated” and the “freely fabricated”—to adapt to the needs of residents and sustain a “sense of place.” Initially used for colonial expansion or military deployment and later adopted for refugee camps, pre-fabricated shelters are often “one-size-fits-all” and their construction is often hard to modify or personalize by their users. They damage easily and are often “alienating” to their inhabitants. “This impersonal nature is not necessarily a result of poor design or architectural ignorance but often goes together with the objectives of those who purchase and deploy them but will not live in them.” Freely fabricated shelters, by contrast, are often created by their inhabitants with materials found close to the building site and cater to the everyday physical and cultural needs of their inhabitants. Notable examples included Afghani shelters that “became grocery stores, restaurants and barber shops by day, allowing the refugees to earn a living” and modify their spaces. The author concludes that the benefits of pre-fab and freely-fabricated architecture can be combined when shelters are governed in a more informal way and are “designed as structures which could be easily changed, moved, and re-appropriated by their residents over time according to their specific needs and preferences.”

Shapiro, Nicholas. “Manufacturing Home.” Journal for the Anthropology of North America, 22, no. 2 (2019): 121–24. https://doi.org/10.1002/nad.12113.

The core question of this article is: “How is manufactured housing not just a response to crises of capital and housing but a key tool for the establishment and continuance of settler colonialism that produces the housing crises that mobile homes are said to solve?” The author contends that low-cost mobile homes/manufactured housing are rooted in European imperialism and have “enabled the mobility of imperialism” (122). 

He argues that the financial savings of prefab are offset by the social costs of being relegated to marginal land and stigmatized, that the homes themselves are often cheaply built, contain carcinogenic chemicals, and are unfit for the environment, leading to hazards such as mold. The market predominantly targets people of color, often through predatory lending practices with higher interest rates and fewer consumer protections. The majority of mobile home purchases are financed via personal property loans like cars (and tend to similarly decrease in value, as opposed to the wealth building of conventional homes). This makes falling behind on payments easy and repossession swift (instead of foreclosure notices, homes can be impounded). Factory‐building homes also allows for the concentration of profits in a small number of firms and often “flatten human-land relations” (123) by refusing place-based materials and construction traditions.

Marino, Elizabeth K., and A. J. Faas. “Is Vulnerability an Outdated Concept? After Subjects and Spaces.” Annals of Anthropological Practice 44, no. 1 (2020): 33–46. https://doi.org/10.1111/napa.12132.

In this article, Marino and Faas argue that although “vulnerability” has been at the core of the “anthropology of disaster” for several decades it can perpetuate violence against marginalized people. They argue that identifying a group as “vulnerable” constitutes a “process of otherizing and essentializing” (36) instead of focusing attention on the “institutions, systems, and individuals that structure risk” (33).