During the Battle of Britain in WWII, aircraft were frequently shot down over the English Channel. For pilots carrying out night raids or operating in bad weather, that was a likely death sentence. As a result, both the Brits and the Luftwaffe deployed small floating shelters built to provide downed pilots with beds, dry clothes, food, first-aid supplies, and small sources of comfort like cigarettes and playing cards. Both countries' designs for these rescue buoys were about 4 square meters, and able to fit up to 4 people. Doesn't this evoke a strange feeling of homeliness? In an environment almost entirely inhospitable to human life — dark waters under an active warzone — there were tiny oases of safety and comfort, placed by an entity of almost unimaginable scale. I've always been a little obsessed with this concept of livable or friendly spaces in hostile or unfamiliar places, but I've never had a word or phrase to describe it. I figured I'd coin such a phrase and ramble about how it ties into my own somewhat unusual sense of "home" and how it's influenced by power structures (or the lack thereof).
The term I've started using for the concept behind the feeling that those WWII rescue buoys evoke in me is "distributed refuge." To give it a baseline definition, it consists of a place, providing a sense of safety and comfort, which is:
I believe every part of this definition is important, though I have weaker examples which are missing individual elements of it.
One of the first times I remember experiencing the powerful emotional association I have with this concept was when I first read the Harry Potter series. Specifically, in book 4 (the Goblet of Fire), in which a tent is described which is much bigger on its inside than its outside. It's described as looking from the outside like a shabby 2-man tent, but on the inside as being warm and full of well-worn furniture and having a bathroom and a kitchen and smelling like cats. That space provided safety and comfort — that is to say, refuge — in a space that was hidden, in an unfamiliar campground, and through a force (magic) which was much larger than Harry or the reader and which neither Harry nor the reader had previously known possessed the power to create such refuge in the manner it did. Thus, it's a decent example of distributed refuge. (It's very unfortunate that one of the clearest examples of the idea in my mind is in Harry Potter of all places, given the significant harms against trans people that its author, Joanne Rowling, continues to fund and publicly support. As difficult as it is to boycott a series of books that was so important to my childhood, I've done so since high school and would encourage anyone reading this to do the same.)
The concept of distributed refuge is strongest for me when it encompasses all aspects of livability, including a place to sleep. Unfortunately, few examples hold up to this stronger requirement, so many of the other examples I have are weak or partial. For example, consider the eduroam wi-fi roaming service. For those who haven't used it, eduroam is a wi-fi network which is present on many secondary school and college campuses worldwide. Anyone with internet access at any one of those institutions has internet access at all of them, providing oases of a very limited form of refuge.
My dad converted to catholicism some time in his 40s, while I was a teenager. Part of his reasoning for doing so stuck with me: as he put it, wherever in the world he went (or at least, wherever a relatively closed-minded white man would want to go), there would be a catholic church not too far away, with the same services and beliefs he could expect anywhere else on the planet — in a sense, the same refuge. While catholic churches tend not to be hidden or subtle, they do fit the other two criteria, particularly with regards to being put in place by an institution far larger and older than any single person.
As a final and slightly more fantastical example, the concepts of secret societies and movie-style spies produce this same feeling for me. I used to idly daydream about starting some sort of powerful secret society distributed all across the world, so that wherever its members find themselves, and whatever trouble they find themselves in, they can get assistance from a powerful network of trusted strangers. Similarly, in spy movies, the protagonists will often need an assist in some far-flung location. One call to their handler will produce an "asset in West Berlin," or some such trusted individual wherever and whenever they need it most.
A common thread you'll have noticed is that all of these involve hierarchical, often oppressive power structures: militaries, churches, governments, etc. And this makes sense, given the third characteristic in my definition: the refuge being put in place by something far larger than oneself. The actors that are most capable of distributing aid and support across massive geographical areas are institutions which are centralized and built around a clear in-group. Without centralization it would be difficult to distribute the burden of constructing and maintaining the infrastructure of refuge (whether physical or social), and without a clear in-group it's difficult to classify a place as broadly "hostile" or "unfamiliar," and difficult to justify constructing it using private funds. Such centralized sources of refuge typically also necessitate policing or surveillance in some form or another; otherwise, they may become useful to squatters, runaways, nonbelievers, an opposing faction, or whoever the maintainers consider undesirable.
But I think there are useful counterexamples to the trend of distributed refuge as a sole output of oppressive hierarchies. For example, I find a bit of refuge every time I'm passing through an area of a city and notice antifascist graffiti. It's not necessarily confined or hidden, but it is often located in areas that might be prone to attracting the things I consider hostile and unfriendly — policing and surveillance — and a sign that those forces have not prevailed. While it isn't produced by any sort of centralized group or hierarchy, it's still maintained by a movement much larger than myself, in which the local anarchists, skater kids, or other graffiti artists also play a part. Mutual aid networks often fill two or three of the criteria for distributed refuge. Even libraries, which are products of government funding, are typically hostile to fascism and friendly to the downtrodden, making them a distributed form of comfort, safety, and predictability in unfamiliar or unforgiving locales. Maybe the greatest example of distributed refuge as a decentralized project working against oppression was the Underground Railroad, which neatly fits all three criteria.
I think the concept of distributed refuge is useful in understanding the appeal of certain hierarchical power structures, the sort that any anarchist, anti-authoritarian, or socialist project should aspire to topple. If it's possible to maintain distributed refuge without centralization and in-groups, we should seek to do so, across the domains of physical shelter, food, medicine, physical comfort, psychological comfort, and social connection. Being part of the chaotic and decentralized movements against oppression in all its forms should feel at more times than it currently does like being part of something immense and tangible and bigger than yourself, like floating warm and dry in a buoy in dark, frigid waters, and like laying the groundwork for that same refuge for future generations of fighters.
A related concept which has majorly influenced my idea of homeliness is that of Jesuit poverty. The Jesuits, which still exist but are most notable as a historical organization, are an order of Catholic missionaries. Jesuits are sworn to a life of poverty, which is used in a specific way to describe a concept separate from the typical notion of "poverty" as material poorness. Instead, Jesuit poverty is focused around owning minimal personal possessions, instead receiving resources from their surrounding community. Nothing material should tie a religious missionary down, the logic goes, so one vows against owning a dwelling, car, or valuables which cannot easily be donated or traded away should duty call. In place of personal possessions, the ideal of Jesuit poverty is that the missionary's possessions are one with their community's. Everything which the Jesuit owns is owned so that they may be of service to their community, and everything which they own is in turn provided to them by that community. Therefore, the ideal adherent of Jesuit poverty is secure, comfortable, and materially rich, but as a function of a surrounding church and community, which may continue to hold onto such resources should the missionary depart with nothing but the essentials for travel.
The idea of Jesuit poverty (or religious poverty more generally) is one I learned about long after adopting its core tenets myself, as best as one can without ties to a broader religious order. My first apartment when I moved out of my parents' house as a rebellious high school senior was rented in my own name (as well as that of my awesome roommate, who I should mention is cool and awesome), but I knew from day zero that I would not have rented it if the only person it was saving was myself. Neither I nor my initial roommate could have moved out independently. The smallest possible community is two, and for a short time that is what we were, with our two-bedroom apartment, communal fridge, and jobs at the same grocery store. The second smallest possible community is three, which we became shortly after when another of my close friends lost her already-unstable housing situation. I had known, and secretly hoped, that various friends of mine might escape the houses they lived in and find shelter under my and my roommate's roof. Other sizes of community include four and five people, each of which the apartment was at various times. We sometimes fought of course, but by and large, we lived together, shared a great deal of things, and found refuge from the bitterness of our familial relations. Quietly, and contentedly, I shouldered a much bigger financial burden than I admitted to. It wasn't a noble self-sacrifice or anything; I knew I had a much stronger support system, I had limited need to save up for college, and I had access to more sources of income thanks to some sketchy freelance coding work. I still was anchored down pretty strongly to that apartment, and I bought plenty of things for specifically myself, but the idea grew in my mind of seeing my own spaces and my own possessions as borrowings from a community to which I might, someday, be called to give them back.
Once I made it to college, and through my mandatory year in an assigned first-year dorm, I found the concept of owning and paying for a dorm or apartment for myself sort of unconscionable. Instead, I slept on couches scattered around the campus academic buildings all summer, moving when the security guards noticed my preferred spots, and showering in an abandoned locker room. When my sophomore year started, I moved into a more permanent home: an unused office in a tucked-away administrative wing of one of the campus buildings. Once I put my student status on pause for some time and was forced to move out, I finally and reluctantly found an apartment, which is where I am currently. I feel very weird about it, although for my remaining time in college, it's likely my only option. At least I can use it as a storage space for an ever-increasing stash of supplies for activism.
The core ideas behind religious poverty are, as I alluded to earlier, primarily associated with militaries and organized religions. As our social and political structures are currently organized, living as a function of one's community isn't an intended possibility. The forces of capitalism and individualism more or less force you to work for a company or government for money, to pay for and own (or rent) your dwelling and possessions using that money, and to further entrench yourself into that cycle as the only path to stability and relative comfort. But in contrast, life in the military fits those ideals rather closely: you live on a base or in barracks, you work to serve the greater aims of the nation it (supposedly) fights for, and you're kept ready to deploy to the other side of the country or the world, leaving behind your dwelling, possessions, and personal relationships to fight for the cause you've been called to.
As with distributed refuge, while religious poverty is closely tied to centralized, hierarchical, and oppressive institutions, it's just as applicable to tight-knit groups fighting for some form of social or political change. I believe that for anarchist, anti-authoritarian, or socialist projects to be successful, it would be beneficial to consider how a microcosm of community-based "poverty" can be constructed within the broader systems of capitalism, democracy, and the nation-state, while maintaining the security and comfort to sustainably live, work, and fight. Those who choose such a life — whether alone or with friends, partners, or families — could move past individualism without first having to restructure all of society to accommodate the ideal conditions for strong community-driven movements for change, which would otherwise be a circular dependency difficult or impossible to break out of.
Both of these concepts, distributed refuge and religious poverty, share important similarities. They both relate to a desire for a force or movement or organization much bigger than oneself, a desire which feeds into both hierarchical institutions and decentralized liberatory movements. They're both intimately tied to housing: anyone who's walked aimlessly alone late at night without a place to sleep has probably experienced a longing for some covert source of shelter and comfort and privacy, and anyone who's felt more at home in a movement of some sort than any physical dwelling likely understands the ideas behind religious poverty. I am a product of both of these experiences, and in my group of friends and acquaintances I can often see similar sentiments expressed (my acquaintances being, of course, a biased sample). In our current society individualism is given a strong preference over community. The notions of "home" we are given are the home as one's castle, the white-picket fence dream of a world built for the white, suburban middle class. The notions of "community" we are given are weak and insubstantial, more about socializing together than surviving together. Community is constructed as something one partakes in separately from the core necessities of shelter or comfort. Giving alternative notions of home and of community a place within our broader society without first having to destroy and rebuild it from the ground up is the only feasible option; no revolution is coming to save us.