Abstract
Domestic Fortress takes fear among the affluent as its starting point. Examining why affluent residents of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia have increasingly turned to fortifying and securitising their homes and neighbourhoods in spite of falling crime rates, Atkinson and Blandy coin the phrase ‘domestic fortress’ to describe these homes and the term ‘tessellated neoliberalism’ to explain their context. The home, in their analysis, is increasingly portrayed as a simultaneously safe and unsafe space – materially, symbolically and psychically – embodying fear, security and (exchange) value. Atkinson and Blandy thus aptly use the concept of the ‘domestic fortress’ as a key analytical tool in order to consider the impacts and proliferation of neoliberalism into the most intimate spaces of some people’s lives. Likewise, they consider the ways that the economic values, anxieties and ideologies that are cultivated within the home ‘interlock’ with those of individuals, neighbourhoods, cities and countries – a basic building block of what they refer to as ‘tessellated neoliberalism’ (p. 171). While the home has historically been a key site of social reproduction and protection, Atkinson and Blandy draw attention not only to these continuities, but also to the particularities they associate with neoliberal capitalism – specifically, an increasing alienation from and reliance on the individual household (and especially the homeowner) for economic and physical security.
In order to try to understand ‘the over-development and layering of security arrangements, strategies and fears’ in the late 20th century (p. 21), over eight chapters Atkinson and Blandy examine in more detail the specific economic, political and social relations that they suggest ‘have, in a sense, domesticated fear’ (p. 23). Chapter 2 explores how socio-economic forces, property law and notions of privacy have led the development of a ‘fortress-home’, in which the responsibility for safety has increasingly shifted from the state to a form of private homeownership that ‘promises territorial control and appreciating wealth’ (p. 44). However, as Atkinson and Blandy point out, these promises have been revealed to be false for many homeowners, as exemplified in events such as the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Picking up this theme of the relation between the private home and personal (in)security, Chapter 3 considers the ‘deep contradictions of the home’ (p. 65) as a site of both physical security and violence, such as domestic violence. Chapters 4 and 5 expand upon this tension between security and insecurity, further examining the promises and limitations of homeownership to ward off perceived risks and to offer a degree of control amid tendencies towards individualising responsibility for household safety. Chapter 6 turns historical, as Atkinson and Blandy situate the contemporary domestic fortress in a history of ‘spiky’ and ‘stealthy’ architecture (p. 109). Connecting this with previous chapters on the psyche, they note that gates, sensors, cameras and other technologies are co-constituted with fearful and alert subjects. Chapter 7 elaborates upon the slippage between self and property, comparing legal issues associated with killing in defence of property in the US, the UK and Australia. In Chapter 8, Atkinson and Blandy zoom out, describing the extension of the domestic fortress to the scale of the neighbourhood and beyond – in gated communities, the exclusionary organisation of public space, fortified suburbs and cities and national border management. This chapter perhaps most clearly illustrates the concept of ‘tessellated neoliberalism’. Finally, Chapter 9 provides a summary of the book, offers a more explicit set of critiques of the domestic fortress and briefly speculates on alternatives.
In the remainder of this review, we aim to start a conversation. We raise several points of clarification that appear to be important pathways for understanding and mobilising the concept of the domestic fortress, as well as some critical questions:
First, the concept of ‘tessellated neoliberalism’, while reiterated as a running thread throughout the book, is still somewhat ambiguous. We wonder if Atkinson and Blandy can elaborate upon the significance of neoliberalism being ‘tessellated’, and how, using an everyday definition of tessellation, neoliberalism is reiterated in patterned ways across space. What are the main features of these patterns, and when do they break down? One way it would be interesting to see this concept elaborated is through an analysis of the photographs of domestic fortresses that pepper the text, but are largely not discussed. How do domestic fortresses in Detroit (pp. 112, 158), Istanbul (p. 167) and Poland (p. 3) follow this pattern, and how much do they differ? Alternately, the (often dangerous) slippage between defence of the home and defence of the self was especially well presented in Chapter 7, but it would be helpful to have more context on how the slippage is particularly neoliberal. Also, does the concept of tessellated neoliberalism leave space for an ‘outside’ or alternative, both materially and politically? We were intrigued by Atkinson and Blandy’s concept of ‘nesting’ as a means of bringing together the relation of contemporary homeownership to both ‘social insurance’ (a ‘nurturing space’) and a kind of ‘defence/containment’ situated within a broader set of socio-spatial relations that ‘works to exclude and control anxiety-inducing populations and risks’ (p. 171). These ‘nesting scales of defensiveness’ thus provide mutually reinforcing realms of ‘safety’, providing a space of comfort that is bolstered and defined through exclusion and separation. We found this concept to be both clear and compelling, and were wondering how it relates to and/or differs from ‘tessellated neoliberalism’.
Second, just as the idea of ‘home’ in the book tends to be tied to private property ownership, it also presumes a homogenous white, heteronuclear family that seeks protection from perceived risks associated with external ‘others’. As such, the normative conceptualisations and practices of the home are themselves violent, something that Atkinson and Blandy recognise in their discussion of domestic violence. However, their discussion of race and racism merits more depth. Racism is mentioned as an additional element or consequence that contributes to manifestations of the domestic fortress, driven by fears of ‘the other’, and that ‘enhances’ inequality (e.g. p. 160). Yet, many have argued that white racism, and particularly white supremacy, is integral to conceptualisations and practices of homeownership and its related ‘community’ (and that these are forces predating neoliberalism, going back to our first question) (Nast, 2000; Pulido, 2000, 2015). The racialised nature of homeownership in the US and other western countries has continually been revealed through practices such as redlining, restrictive covenants and the more recent ‘greenlining’ of subprime mortgages, as well as securitised neighbourhoods and bordered communities where ‘othered’ bodies are scrutinised, excluded and policed. We suggest that the fears and anxieties that emerge around homeownership – especially those of the affluent – are racialised through state policies as well as everyday practices. We thus want to ask: on what grounds do the authors base their argument that race is simply an additional factor contributing to the development of the domestic fortress, rather than a constitutive one?
Finally, as acknowledged by the authors, the primary message of this book is a depressing one, where there is an open question as to whether ‘a less defended form of urbanism and neighborhood life’ is possible – especially given that the fortress home is ‘nested’ within fortified social space (p. 189). Atkinson and Blandy suggest a revival of the seemingly romantic concepts of neighbourhood and community as an alternative. However, as they also point out, members of gated communities themselves reference and valorise the neighbourhood and community, often as a means of justifying defensive practices. This reveals a danger that promoting an imagined ideal of community or neighbourhood could simply lead to more of the domestic fortress status quo (see Joseph, 2002). How, then, could neighbourhood and community be defined and practiced in ways that resist a ‘fortress mentality’? Here we are thinking of alternative understandings of home – such as bell hooks’ (1990) notion of ‘homeplace’, where the home has provided a key ‘safe’ space for the collective healing and resistance of African Americans, a space for political organising in order to pursue equity and justice within the socio-political space beyond the individual home. How might the ‘homeplace’ – or other similar conceptualisations of the home – disrupt or break down notions of the alienated, anti-social domestic fortress?