Our Manifesto

En español aquí

The Radical Housing Journal (RHJ) is an orientation, a praxis for doing research and action. It seeks to critically intervene in pre and post-crisis housing experiences and activist strategies from around the world without being confined to the strict dogmatism of academic knowledge production.

The Journal is defined by how it approaches matters of ‘housing’, ‘home’, ‘homelessness’, ‘eviction,’ ‘intersectionality,’ and the likes, and by its capacity to generate thought and action around those areas of concern, recognising the systemic inequalities in how our housing environments are produced and reproduced. It speaks both to academic and non-academic, grassroots activists, practitioners and policy-makers concerned with housing injustices globally and active in responding to such a concern. It is not, in this sense, a traditional self-referential academic journal but a cross-cutting publication which aims to mobilise the attention and related action of different constituencies. The RHJ adds to and expands the existing landscape of critical housing, home and urban publications by creating a new space where different forms of knowledge production and diffusion can be experimented with. The Journal’s ethos and aims are to:

  • consider housing and home inalienable under any circumstance;
  • encourage the collaboration among activists working within and beyond academia;
  • approach the study of conditions and processes that render housing alienable combining different theoretical standpoints;
  • welcome transdisciplinarity and transnational approaches to conceptualizing the structural aspects and everyday elements of housing and resistance;
  • encourage different methodological approaches and provide tools for radical learning on the use of these methodologies;
  • promote a non-exploitative, ecological, anti-racist, feminist and horizontal politics in its own structure and functioning.

We believe that it is only through an action-oriented cross-fertilization between grassroots activists and other forms of intellectual production that a radical scholarship of housing can take place, and that the RHJ will provide the necessary space for such scholarship to flourish. The Journal therefore invites contributions that involve theoretical and methodological reflections on critical housing issues, insights on how contextual housing movements are organised worldwide, and hands-on strategies for action. It welcomes work from activists, academics and practitioners, however defined in their theoretical and practical stances, who recognise themselves in this Manifesto.

The RHJ is autonomous in its politics and financing. It is organised around two Collectives (Editorial and Extended), which are horizontally structured. A low-cost printed version will be provided when possible, while individual papers are freely available online. Finances permitting, all original peer-reviewed contributions are compensated.