When
Talk Title: “Broken Windows to Broken Homes: Homebreaking as Racialized and Gendered Poverty Governance”
Abstract:
"While broken windows policing is traditionally understood as a tactic of governing public space, Rahim Kurwa and I show how this mode of policing is also a war on domestic space (article forthcoming in Feminist Formations). We take up Black feminist calls to investigate how the domestic of domestic warfare compels us to look more closely at the home and household. In this talk, I ask: How does the state leverage broken windows-style policing to govern the home? Drawing from three different cases in Los Angeles County—gang injunctions, post-release supervision, and housing vouchers—I’ll present ethnographic data, interviews, and court filings to show how the state treats the homes of people of color as “broken” sites of disorder. My coauthor and I argue that it is the state that engages in homebreaking, not the residents. We identify homebreaking as the state’s attempt to break the home as a site of social reproduction and refuge from oppression."
Zoom Link: https://arizona.zoom.us/j/89441238395
Zoom Password: policing