Autarchy
Root: Greek autarkhía – absolute governing auto- self arkhia- rule Autarchy describes systems which of “absolute control”; the term is used to describe governments which have high levels of control over their populace, and also somewhat paradoxically to describe systems of “self-rule” based on a political philosophy of individual liberty – in which one rules oneself and no other. In his 1971 article “Garbage Housing”, Martin Pawley uses the term in the sense of self-rule, emphasizing the importance of self-governance and individual agency to solving the problem of inadequate shelter for the lowest-income groups of societies. Pawley’s suggested “Garbage Housing” strategies of consumer goods packaging being designed for secondary use a building materials seeks to liberate the lower-income members of society from what he identifies as the ineffective interstices between contemporary policy, economy, and the construction industry which traditionally ‘rule’ the world of institutionalized house-building, which has left uncounted numbers of humans unable to purchase a home, a shelter universally acknowledged as a basic human need.1 Pawley’s suggestion of redesigning consumer goods and their packaging for secondary use for DIY house building makes full use of the existing pervasive structures of production and consumption; already-marketed and currently consumed products are to have their packaging slightly redesigned so as to make them viable, effective building materials once their first lifetime is up. The system is therefore described as ‘parasitic’; distribution is taken care of by the far-ranging transportation networks of the products first life (the ubiquity of garbage in the environment today is testament to the effectiveness of these networks), and sorting and assembly will be carried out by the consumers (now builders) themselves.