A license to kill: necro economic suffocation by stealth
5:30pm - 7:30pm /
Wednesday 14th May 2025
/ Venue: Ground floor event space School of Law & Social Justice
Type: Lecture /
Category: Department
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- Admission: Free
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Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lecture Series
Our Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lectures are a long-standing annual public lecture series hosted by the Department.
Speakers:
Professor Imogen Tyler, Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University.
Professor Beverley Skeggs, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University.
Discussant: Ian Sinha, Consultant Respiratory Paediatrician, Alder Hey Children's Hospital, Liverpool.
We felt like the air in our homes was killing us … we were told we were “breathing too much” (Anon Rochdale Borough Housing tenant quoted in Lythgoe, 2024).
Three decades of austerity in the UK and a longer history of deregulation, privatisation and financialisation of state services have seen the deterioration of the elemental infrastructures, those that provided a basic level of security for the population. Our water now contains significant amounts of industrial toxins and sewage, our land and soil have been infiltrated by long-standing PCBs that manifest through food, and the air is filled with noxious chemicals. In this talk, we bring air, water, and land pollution together as they are concretised in people’s homes and stealthily embodied through breathing polluted air. We analyse the case of Awaab Ishak, whose death (age two) made these harms visible when he suffocated from mould in his home in Rochdale, Northwest England. Making visible the necro economic policies that have made our most intimate spaces for daily living dangerous, we examine the incompetence and indifference displayed by those who profit from their investment in housing and consider how premature deaths from indoor air pollution have been symbolically legitimated (through classism, racism and xenophobia). We argue that the deregulation and sale (privatisation) of state social housing has granted property owners and managers a licence to kill. However, communities living and working at the frontline of collapse of Britain's social and welfare infrastructures are ‘fighting for life’ (Kelley, 2024). In Awaab’s case, it was the determination and tenacity of family, journalists, clinicians, lawyers and coroners forced the endemic malignancy at the heart of the deregulated UK housing industry into public view, compelling a national government response. A fight for life that teaches us that we need to put people before profit everywhere.
Our Eleanor Rathbone Social Justice Public Lectures are a long-standing annual public lecture series hosted by the Department.
Speakers:
Professor Imogen Tyler, Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University.
Professor Beverley Skeggs, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Lancaster University.
Discussant: Ian Sinha, Consultant Respiratory Paediatrician, Alder Hey Children's Hospital, Liverpool.
We felt like the air in our homes was killing us … we were told we were “breathing too much” (Anon Rochdale Borough Housing tenant quoted in Lythgoe, 2024).
Three decades of austerity in the UK and a longer history of deregulation, privatisation and financialisation of state services have seen the deterioration of the elemental infrastructures, those that provided a basic level of security for the population. Our water now contains significant amounts of industrial toxins and sewage, our land and soil have been infiltrated by long-standing PCBs that manifest through food, and the air is filled with noxious chemicals. In this talk, we bring air, water, and land pollution together as they are concretised in people’s homes and stealthily embodied through breathing polluted air. We analyse the case of Awaab Ishak, whose death (age two) made these harms visible when he suffocated from mould in his home in Rochdale, Northwest England. Making visible the necro economic policies that have made our most intimate spaces for daily living dangerous, we examine the incompetence and indifference displayed by those who profit from their investment in housing and consider how premature deaths from indoor air pollution have been symbolically legitimated (through classism, racism and xenophobia). We argue that the deregulation and sale (privatisation) of state social housing has granted property owners and managers a licence to kill. However, communities living and working at the frontline of collapse of Britain's social and welfare infrastructures are ‘fighting for life’ (Kelley, 2024). In Awaab’s case, it was the determination and tenacity of family, journalists, clinicians, lawyers and coroners forced the endemic malignancy at the heart of the deregulated UK housing industry into public view, compelling a national government response. A fight for life that teaches us that we need to put people before profit everywhere.