Citation: STEVENS, S., 2017. Life and letting die: a story of the homeless, autonomy, and anti-social behaviour. Organization Studies, 38 (5), pp. 669-690.Additional Information:• This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Organiza- Life and letting die: A story of the homeless, autonomy, and anti-social behaviour
AbstractIf I were to say that the architecture in our public spaces is 'really speaking to us', you would be forgiven for thinking this is a piece about the aesthetics of our cities. In some ways in fact, it is, but not in any artistic sense. I am not discussing a collection of monuments, town houses or grandiose buildings. Alas, the architecture I talk of is more humble and yet perhaps more sinister. There is a message encoded into it, within our parks, streets and centres, which seems to be part of a wider narrative. This essay is an attempt to read it, find out what it says, and consider how that may affect our concept of autonomy, but also, to encourage us to reflect on Waldron's thought provoking piece is normative, because it presents prior moral criteria of negative liberty and appeals to 'abstract liberal principles ' (Waldron, 1991, p. 295) to frame homelessness in a way that elicits concern: it structures a narrative, in which discomfort over policy is underpinned by a sense of power (for both the reader and the author) regarding normative framing as a starting point. Essentially, these prior principles are set up to be reinforced by a narrative. Instead, I hope to tell a story of the homeless that does not simply confirm this conceptual security, but unsettle it. This is done through exploring how the homeless subject is constructed.The question which leads this essay is Nietzschean, it seems to me, because it begins from a place of method rather than principle: a historical inquiry searching for subtle shifts which over the years combine to form our current perception. But why start from this place? Mainly, because I do not seek to impose a principle onto a story to reinvigorate that principle, but rather tell a story to see what concepts come out of it. Or perhaps more specifically, I offer this narrative of homelessness to see how our familiarity with the idea of autonomy fairs, to recognise its confines, whilst gently placing a question mark over a normative framing and its origin point of perfectibility.It should be noted however, that this apparent methodological origin does not claim to do away with prejudices and (ironically, being a genealogical approach) arrive at objective origins (Strauss, 1988, p. 11): merely that our starting point is not a moral framework, but a commitment to a non-moral, historicised one, which will subsequently allow us to think with prejudice.Thus, there is a qualitative difference, I think, between starting from a moral prejudice, and allowing it into your reflection. As the latter is read without the distortion of a moral framework prior to the story, the narrative produces the moral discussion, rather than the principle imposing itself upon ...