Eurhythmisation and organisational rites of housing squats in Rome

Abstract

The paper explores the forms of social reproduction and organisation that punctuate the everyday life of the housing squats that are part of Housing Rights Movements in Rome through the analytical lens offered by Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis of Mediterranean cities, with special focus on the concepts ‘eurhythmia’ and ‘rites’. It advances that the spatial transformations, alternative forms of social reproduction and politics envisaged by housing squatters out of necessity can be better understood through the notions of ‘eurhythmisation’ and ‘organisational rites’, that complement/update Lefebvre’s original vocabulary. The analysis is based on empirical materials collected during the author’s activist-ethnography within the Movimento per il Diritto all’Abitare (Movement for the Right to Habitation), focusing on three distinctive features of the housing squats’ habitation in common: the material and immaterial infrastructures of self-defence; the assembly as the time/space of collective habitation and deliberation; the commoning of social reproduction.

Keywords:

• rhythmanalysis
• eurhythmia
• urban rites
• housing squats
• Rome

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to all my Blocchi Precari Metropolitani comrades, and the community of the Movimento per il Diritto all’Abitare at large, for the shared politics and the constant intellectual and emotional engagement. I am also thankful to the GSSI’s colleagues for the support to the research and writing of this article. Additional thanks to the Special Feature editors for the kind invitation and the hard work in putting this together during such challenging times, and to the City editors and reviewers for the useful comments and insights.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Since 2014, the new ‘National Housing Plan’ disciplines the administrative conduct against housing squatters. The latter include their exclusion from public housing, the impossibility to register their address inside a squatted dwelling. Besides, utility providers are at liberty to cut the services (water included) at any time, while being forbidden to open new contracts inside squatted places (Gargiulo 2021; Grazioli 2021).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margherita Grazioli

Margherita Grazioli is postdoctoral research fellow in Economic Geography within the Social Sciences Area of the Gran Sasso Science Institute at L’Aquila, Italy and a member of the Collective Study Lab Beyond Habitation (supported through Professor Michele Lancione’s ERC Starting Grant on ‘Inhabiting Radical Housing’ at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy). Email: [email protected]