Objects and Evictions: The Politics of Things and the Reshaping of Urban Marginality

ABSTRACT

Scholars have extensively documented different forms of violence experienced by homeless and evictable people, but paid less attention to how their material belongings are handled by the perpetrators of violence. Based on the method of engaged anthropology, the article identified three main regimes of handling material belongings during evictions in Bucharest. One is home‐reenactment objects, that is the reconstruction of home in public spaces through salvaged belongings. The second is turning objects to non‐objects, through the classification of home objects as trash by the agents of forced evictions. The third is blackmail objects, that is using belongings to force the evictees into abandoning any form of resistance. Turning to objects and the materiality of evictions helps understand both short‐term and long‐term forms of dispossession in evictions and homelessness and the materiality of the right to the city.