Workshop on Land, Capital, and Shelter
An event hosted by Professor Jason Jackson and collaborators
The treatment of public and private spaces as commodities has a long and varied history across geographies the world over, and scholars of capitalism tend to treat it as an economic and social formation characterized in terms of production, labor relations, and exploitation. But there has been far less attention given to the commodification of land and housing as sites of social reproduction, in other words, the spaces of home, neighborhood, and community through which everyday life is sustained. Unlike spaces of production (e.g., the workplace), it is in communities and homes that domestic work, care work, and mutual aid take place. But the socially reproductive function of these sites is jeopardized by processes of commodification that reshape the city. So, we ask: what does the transformation of land and shelter into investible real estate mean for city governance, urban development, housing rights movements, and the lived experience of city residents? And what are the effects of capitalist processes such as privatization, financialization, assetization, and technification/digitalization on spaces of social reproduction?
This workshop will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from MIT — and outside MIT — for the following sessions:
10:00-10:30 | Workshop welcome and introductions
10:30-12:30 | Financialization, Technification, and Futurity in Real Estate, moderated by Jason Jackson and featuring conversation with Philip Ashton (UIC), Desiree Fields (UC Berkeley), Huma Gupta (MIT), and Rachel Weber (Harvard).
2:00-3:30 | Debt and Transformations in Economic and Urban Governance, moderated by Erica C. James and featuring conversation with devin michelle bunten (MIT), Prentiss Dantzler (UToronto), Michael Glass (Boston College), and Sarah Quinn (Washington).
3:45-5:15 | Resistance to Dispossession, Displacement, and Extraction, moderated by Catherine D'Ignazio and featuring conversation with Mariana Arcaya (MIT), Eric Robsky Huntley (MIT), Scott Markley (National Zoning Atlas), Chenab Navalkha (Johns Hopkins), and Jacob Udell (Tenant Union Federation).
Generously funded by the Bemis Fund, the SA+P Dean's Office, the HCED and IDG groups, the CRE, and the Political Economy Lab.