The palace and the cottage are equally social, not closer to nature.

Evidence

“Ifthe palace be unnatural, the cottage is so no less.,, That is to say, the primitive cottage is not the natural and pre-social expression of something. We are not closer to nature with a primitive cottage than with a palace. It is simply a different distribution, a different form of the necessary intertwining of the social and the natural, since the social is part of the natural and the natural is always conveyed by the social. So, we have the principle that civil society is an historical-natural co’nstant for humani1:)r. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1519

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: challenging the modern ‘natural-living/back-to-basics’ nostalgia by pointing out that the rustic cottage is just as socially constructed as the palace.