Finally, there: The Atlas “Dirt Cheap! - Urban Everyday Life in the Convenient City“ is the result of the first semester students work in UDP1:
"Approaching everyday practices in the convenient city, as a starting point for grasping the imperial mode of living, we were led to six products that are embedded in the networks behind Dirt Cheap. (...)
The banana marks our first chapter leading us into the historical structures and inequalities that form the fruit selection at our supermarkets until today. Secondly, we regard exploitative activities towards human actors and non-human actants, through the lens of the B*Shelf at one of the most popular furniture companies in Western society. The dive into a company, which is pervaded with mechanisms to maximize profit, is enabled through a deeper insight into the burger. (...) Chapter four opens up the power relations and cultural systems behind a product, which is unavoidable when thinking about contemporary urban culture, coffee. Not less recognizable for the convenient city of today is the e-scooter, which provides us a deeper look into the conditions behind an innovative mobility service. Chapter six reveals the often invisible service of cleaning as a product, which tells us much about the cultural dimensions as well as the working conditions the cleaners are embedded into."
"With these six products we want to make visible what lies behind the cheapness of nature, work, care, food, energy, money and lives (Patel and Moore 2017, p. 3), and its interwovenness in every- day life in the convenient city. For a more theoretical approach, we provide you with an additional “Manual for Cheapness – How to Keep Things Dirty”, that includes the dominant mechanisms to create cheapness and dirtiness."
Thank you to Helmut Völter for the great support on bookmaking!
This project was developed as part of the UDP1_Dirt Cheap!: Urban Everyday Life in the Convenient City.
A common thread in the analysis of the multiple crises that urban societies face at present is that of rising costs, everything seems to be more and more expensive: prices of land and housing in urban areas have been skyrocketing for almost two decades now. Most recently, costs of construction, prizes for various products, resources and raw materials, as well as costs of living have risen …