Housing Theory and Society 

About: Housing Theory and Society is an academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Public housing & Welfare state. It has an ISSN identifier of 1403-6096. Over the lifetime, 682 publications have been published receiving 16058 citations.

A place called home

Abstract: This article reviews literature on the concept of 'place' and discusses its relevance to housing research. The article begins by providing a working definition of place before embarking upon an examination of the connections between place and identity. The nature of such attachments to place is examined through the work of Martin Heidegger (1973) and Pierre Bourdieu (1979). The relationship between place attachment and the volatile political-economy of place construction is subsequently discussed. The paper then continues with an outline of the importance of the concept of 'place' for housing researchers and concludes with some suggestions for further research. While discussions about 'place' have been a key preoccupation of geographers for some decades, housing researchers have barely touched on the subject. Yet, at the present time - a time of increasing migration, expanding urbanization, and swelling investments in place-construction (ranging from individual real-estate sales to city and regional re-de...

Housing Pathways - A Post Modern Analytical Framework

Abstract: Many different frameworks can be used to describe and understand the set of relationships involved in the production, consumption and distribution of housing. This paper is an attempt to put forward one way of looking at what will be termed the housing field. This is not meant to deny the validity or usefulness of other frameworks or to put forward a housing theory, which explains all there is to know about the nature and meaning of housing. The assumption is that any framework offers only a partial insight into any social phenomenon and may obscure as much as it clarifies. Frameworks can be judged on the basis of their internal consistency and on the value of the insights, which they provide which by their very nature, will be contested. The intention of the paper is to review very briefly some common ways of looking at the housing field and to put forward a framework, based on social constructionism, which aims to be internally consistent and relatively comprehensive in its coverage.

Centring Housing in Political Economy

Abstract: The issue of “housing” has generally not been granted an important role in post-war political economy. Housing-as-policy has been the preserve of social policy analysis and of a growing field of housing studies; housing-as-market has been confined to mainstream economics. This paper insists that political-economic analysis can no longer remain relatively indifferent to the housing question since housing is implicated in the contemporary capitalist political economy in numerous critical, connected and very often contradictory ways. The paper conceptualizes this implication by identifying the multiple roles of housing when “capital” – the essential “stuff” of political economy – is considered from the perspective of each of its three primary, mutually constitutive guises: as process of circulation, as social relation and as ideology. Mobilizing these three optics to provide a critical overall picture of housing-in-political-economy (more than a political economy of housing), we draw on and weave tog...

Ontological Security and Psycho-Social Benefits from the Home: Qualitative Evidence on Issues of Tenure

Abstract: It has been said that people need the confidence, continuity and trust in the world which comprise ontological security in order to lead happy and fulfilled lives, and furthermore that ontological security can be attained more through owner occupied than rented housing. Ontological security, however, can be elusive both in a real sense and in empirical research terms. As part of a study of the relationships between housing tenure and health, we explored through in-depth interviews with 43 adults the extent to which home owners and social renters in the West of Scotland obtained psycho-social benefits from their homes. It is important to acknowledge the regional context of the study, in particular the residualised state of social rented housing in the UK and the problematic, post-industrial nature of the Scottish regional economy. Interviewees felt protected by their homes when they were in a low crime area which was more likely to be in an area of owner occupied housing. For some interviewees owner occupation provided less protection than social renting from the threat of losing the home because of the risk of repossession. Inhabiting a house rather than a flat could promote autonomy over the home, as could having skills or income to carry out repairs and maintenance. Owner occupation was thought to be more prestigious than social renting, but whether being prestigious was desirable was sometimes contested. Interviewees also talked about ontological security in terms of the home being a site of constancy but this runs counter to the restless tendency to move house in order to progress in society and move up the housing ladder.