ABSTRACT
Through a critical examination of ‘tiny houses’ and their relationship to the global degrowth movement, a more just and systems-oriented sustainability is articulated. The author has experience as a tiny house builder, inhabitant and landlord. Tiny houses can articulate with the principles of degrowth to expose neocolonial paradoxes imbedded in the architectural and social aesthetics of sustainability. Together, these movements converge to offer transformative environmental and social justice models that rupture the settler colonial and neoliberal logics of North America and Europe. The recent popularity of the movement exemplifies how the commodification of environmental sustainability continues to shelter economic and class privilege. While tiny houses offer some degrowth potential they also entail limitations as a simple anti-capitalist and anti-colonialist strategy for achieving degrowth. This chapter explores how the tiny house movement can benefit from sustained engagement with sustainability-driven movements like degrowth, with their refusals of capitalist, colonial and settler-colonial practices.
