The View from the Traveller Site: Post-nomadic Subjects and the Material Relations of Permanent Temporary Dwelling

I shall begin by clarifying the concept of post-nomadism, used here with reference to the subject and to architecture. Rather than supposing a transition between forms of life conceived as distinct and whole, one nomadic and the other sedentary, post-nomadism suggests transformations of a nomadic way of life without assuming that they constitute a trajectory toward a sedentist notion of becoming settled. These transformations, which are variously legal, material, political and social, cannot in practice be disentangled. Familism, architecture and settlement form, and the status and claims of legal/extra-legal subjects are interdependently involved. We may not assume such changes will result in either greater incorporation or increased alienation vis à vis the state. As described in the European Court’s press release following Connors v The United Kingdom in 2004 (ECtHR Application no. Hoare, A E 2014 The View from the Traveller Site: Post-nomadic Subjects and the Material Relations of Permanent Temporary Dwelling. Opticon1826, (16): 18, pp. 1-16, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/opt.bz