Divergent Housing Spatialities and Gender Subjectivities in Transition: Women's Cooperatives and Poverty Eradication Discourse in Dakar, Senegal

Abstract

This article examines the dynamic relationship between spaces and subjectivity, demonstrating how they mutually influence each other to produce distinctive housing spatialities. Through ethnographic research in Thiaroye sur Mer, Dakar (Senegal), I analyze how women's subjectivities, responding to historical processes and poverty eradication discourses, have developed alternative and novel economic models that transform domestic spaces. My findings reveal that women’s collectives systematically appropriate family living spaces, converting them into sites of production, which generates deviant spatial and social refigurations. By introducing the concept of ‘cultural spatialities’, I demonstrate how the emerging housing spatialities remain deeply embedded in local codes and norms while simultaneously challenging traditional spatial arrangements. This research contributes to the anthropology of space and place by illuminating how economic necessity drives new subjectivities and spatial innovation, revealing that housing transformations in Global South contexts follow local-specific patterns rather than universal trajectories. The case of Thiaroye sur Mer illustrates how marginalized communities actively reshape their built environment to negotiate changing socio-economic realities — influenced by both local needs and international actors and discourses around poverty reduction — creating hybrid spaces that serve both reproductive and productive functions.