Callous Objects: Designs Against the Homeless

by Robert Rosenberger University of Minnesota Press 12/15/2017, paperback SKU: 9781517904401   Uncovering injustices built into our everyday surroundings Callous Objects unearths cases in which cities push homeless people out of public spaces through a combination of policy and strategic design. Robert Rosenberger examines such commonplace devices as garbage cans, fences, signage, and benches--all of which reveal political agendas beneath the surface. Such objects have evolved, through a confluence of design and law, to be open to some uses and closed to others, but always capable of participating in collective ends on a large scale. Rosenberger brings together ideas from the philosophy of technology, social theory, and feminist epistemology to spotlight the widespread anti-homeless ideology built into our communities and enacted in law. Part of the University of Minnesota Press "Forerunners: Ideas First" series - short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis,