Housing and Social Theory

Jim Kemeny

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138972018
• eBook ISBN: 9781134924387
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Studies in housing have often concentrated on an abstract institutionalised approach isolated from the broader base of the social sciences. This book is the first to treat housing as a subject of social theory. It provides a critique of current research and theorises housing in relation to political science, social change and welfare developing a case study to illustrate these applications. By being sometimes controversial, this book will stimulate debate among housing theorists and sociologists alike.The Author is currently Senior Research fellow at the Swedish Institute for Building Research and Docent in Sociology at Uppsala University. He has written widely on Housing, Urban Studies and Sociology and his books include THE MYTH OF HOME OWNERSHIP and THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN NIGHTMARE.

Part I
Housing and metatheory

1 The disciplinary basis of housing studies

INTRODUCTION

During the early postwar period, housing research was carried out largely within established disciplines such as economics or sociology, or in social administration or social work departments, and there were no academic journals devoted to the field. Today housing is emerging as a specialist field and the rapid institutionalisation of housing research provides the context for an evaluation of the relationship of housing studies to older, more established cognate fields such as urban studies and to the social science disciplines from which housing researchers often draw inspiration and concepts. It prompts the question of what exactly is this field of housing studies? And how can we begin to understand the place of housing research in the context of wider social questions, and in relation to other areas of the social sciences?

In this chapter I propose to conduct a general and fairly wide-ranging examination of the place of housing studies in the social sciences. My concern is both to maximise the benefit of advances in other areas of social science and to contribute to wider debates outside of housing issues narrowly defined. However, before we can consider the place of housing studies in the social sciences it is necessary to clarify what is meant by ‘disciplines’ and the sense in which the term is used in this discussion. I largely limit my observations to housing research in English-speaking countries, though my direct knowledge of housing research in Scandinavian countries and what I know of housing research from translated work in other countries suggest that similar principles are likely to apply everywhere.

ON THE NATURE OF DISCIPLINES

In general, the social science disciplines can be seen to be based on dividing the social world into a number of dimensions. Sociology, for example, ‘dimensions out’ social relationships which are often conceptualised in terms of the abstraction known as social structure. Economics does the same for the market. Psychology dimensions out individual mental processes. Political science dimensions out power and political institutions. Geography dimensions out space; history dimensions out time, and so on.

Each discipline develops its own sets of conceptual tools for the analysis of its particular dimension. Theories are explicated and tested, and a characteristic mode of discourse is evolved through the generations, with its own major debates and controversies. The point about this is that each discipline is based on researchers being ‘disciplined’ into thinking in certain ways and in critically evaluating existing theories and concepts developed by others within that mode of discourse.

Disciplines are based on a process of conceptual abstraction. That abstraction provides the epistemological basis for the discipline and provides it with a selective frame of analysis. Disciplines are not normally defined in terms of a concrete field or subject of analysis (though, as we shall see, they may be). They are more usually defined by a frame of reference, even if some frames of reference prove in practice to be more amenable to theorising than others.

A good example is the sociological frame of reference, which, by abstracting out such a general dimension as social structure, provides wide scope for theorising. Geography, by contrast, appears to enjoy less scope for theorising since the focus upon the concept of spatial relationships is narrower and more restricted. The same is true for history in relation to temporal factors. The disciplines based on time and space within the social sciences are therefore much less theoretical and more empirical in nature, largely because the scope for theorising time and space as dimensions is limited. So although historians and geographers have attempted to theorise temporal and spatial dimensions respectively of social phenomena, the vast bulk of work in these disciplines has been devoted to describing social phenomena in terms of temporal drift and spatial configuration. In sociology, by contrast, much more effort has gone into developing the theory of social structures.

Having said this, however, it is important not to exaggerate the extent to which disciplines are logical and rational structures of thought. Not all disciplines are dimension-based, and some subject areas have succeeded in becoming established as disciplines: social work and social administration are examples of this. Disciplines are to a large extent the product of power struggles taking place both within universities and between the research world and funders: including, crucially, the state. Care must therefore be taken not to reify the concept of a discipline into a theoretically pure phenomenon. It so happens that the discipline I am most concerned with in the context of comparative housing studies and the subject of theories of social change—sociology—has a long tradition of theoretical work and a wealth of concepts to draw upon.

What, then, is the basis of housing studies? It is neither a discipline in the sense that it abstracts out a dimension of society, nor is it an established ‘subject-based discipline’ in university power structures, even if it is rapidly becoming so. Before addressing this question it might prove instructive to consider briefly two closely related fields: urban studies and social administration.

THE CASE OF URBAN STUDIES

The growing interest in theory within urban studies has led to considerable effort being made to identify the epistemological grounds of the field. The question of whether it is possible to theorise the urban has been considered in some detail by Saunders (1986). From a wide-ranging overview of the attempt to theorise the urban by major social theorists since Marx, Saunders concludes that the urban does not provide the basis for special theoretical focus, and that all previous attempts to find one have failed.

Urban studies is a problematic field because it is based on selecting out a dichotomous element in social structure, namely the ‘urban’ contra the ‘rural’, a fact recognised by Frankenberg (1966) in his concept of the ‘urban-rural continuum’. At the same time, urban areas are an appealing focus for research because towns and cities in industrial societies appear to have concentrated in them many of the major social problems of modern society. More important, perhaps, is the underlying belief that the urban constitutes the essence of ‘modernity’ and that it is in the urban that the basic dynamic of social change can perhaps be found. There is therefore considerable interest in developing epistemological grounds for theorising the urban.

The search for an alternative way of conceptualising problems involving an urban dimension has continued. Perhaps the most convincing recent attempt has been that of Gregory and Urry (1985) in their reconceptualisation of regional issues by identifying the interface between social structures and spatial factors as constituting a theoretical focus. Such a redefinition would abolish the urban as a focus for theorising, but would integrate urban and rural into a regional studies based on the interaction between spatial and social dimensions (geography and sociology).

Gregory and Urry bring together a number of papers which, when taken together, represent different ways of integrating spatial factors into social theory. They are critical of the aspatial nature of social theory, and argue that an integration of human geography and social theory provides the basis for a new and more comprehensive approach to explanation in the social sciences. As they put it:

The aim of this book is to minimise some of the academic space between human geography and social theory in order to establish a new agenda for theoretical and empirical work and so explore new and challenging ‘common ground’.

(Gregory and Urry, 1985:8)

However, the book is a highly programmatic statement. It provides no real basis for a new perspective, but rather signals its desirability. It is too early to say whether approaches of this nature are likely to result in the emergence of a new socio-spatial perspective in which urban and rural issues share the same epistemology. There is certainly considerable work now being done on issues of ‘locality’ (see Duncan and Goodwin, 1988) which highlights the influence of spatial distribution on social structure and which could ultimately bridge the gap between urban and rural studies. Even more promising is a recent attempt to develop an integrated socio-spatial approach to restructuring in locality studies that explains spatial change in terms of social, cultural, and political processes (Baggueley et al., 1990). But all this is very tentative and it will probably be some time before it is clear whether or not a new perspective is emerging.

THE CASE OF SOCIAL ADMINISTRATION

Housing studies has a close—even intimate—relationship to social administration. This is because housing is itself an important area of concern to social administration and because much housing research has its origins in the research tradition of social administration. However, social administration has undergone something of a transformation since the early 1970s, with a rapidly growing theoretical awareness greatly exceeding that within housing studies (Forder et al., 1984; George and Wilding, 1976; Gough, 1979; Mishra, 1981; Offe, 1984; Pinker, 1971; Taylor-Gooby and Dale, 1981). The kinds of issues that are grappled with in this book in terms of housing have been the subject of debate in terms of welfare within social administration since at least the mid-1970s. Part of that debate concerns the relationship of social administration to other subjects, to theory, and to the social science disciplines.

Mishra (1981: ch. 1) has delineated the principal characteristics of social administration: its national British focus, values of interventionism and piecemeal reform, supra-disciplinary (or field) orientation, and empiricism. This list will have a familiar ring to it for housing researchers. With the partial exception of the ethnocentric focus on the British welfare state— which has anyway changed during the 1980s towards a much more international comparative focus in both housing and social administration— Mishra’s depiction of social administration also applies to much of housing studies.

Mishra summarises succinctly the principal dissatisfactions that have emerged over recent years with the nature of social administration as a research area. He also points out that there is no consensus over the relationship between social administration and the social science disciplines: for example, Donnison defining it as simply a ‘field’ drawing on various disciplines while Titmuss saw social administration as an emerging synthetic discipline in its own right (Mishra, 1981:20).

This latter view is endorsed by Carrier and Kendall (1977). They attempt to define the subject matter of social administration in terms of ‘welfare activities whose manifest purpose is to influence differential “command over resources” according to some criteria of need’ (Carrier and Kendall, 1977:27). This definition is broader and more general than traditional definitions in terms of statutory welfare, such as put forward by Titmuss, for example, in that it focuses on the distinction between private market and welfare provision in its widest sense.

But even this distinction does not provide the basis for a new synthetic discipline of social administration, and an even more general and wide-ranging approach is in the process of emerging: one in which welfare is not seen as limited to a public-private distinction but is defined as a basic characteristic which can take many forms and which constitutes the subject focus of social administration. This approach is emerging out of the debate over the supposed monopoly role of the state in welfare provision: a position that has come under increasing attack in recent years. The growing importance of other forms of provision—by the market, employers, voluntary agencies, and informal networks, sometimes known as ‘welfare pluralism’ (Johnson, 1987)—has if nothing else drawn attention to the need for a broader definition of welfare. Rose (1986a, 1986b) argues that welfare is provided in many forms but principally by households informally, by the state, and by the market, and that the ‘welfare mix’ of these three types of welfare varies both over time and between countries.

This point will be returned to in Chapter 5. For now we need only note that social administration is gradually evolving a conceptual approach to the subject of welfare. The process is still in its early stages but it is clear that, by moving away from a narrow statutory definition of welfare in which existing practices and laws define and delimit what is and is not a legitimate subject for social administration, the way is opened up to develop a definition of welfare in terms of a more general social dimension. What form this will take remains as yet unclear. But one possibility could be to base it on the Marxist concept of the reproduction of labour, involving some concept of ‘mutual aid’, irrespective of the providing agency, whether it be state, employer, voluntary, private, neighbourhood, or family.

SUBSTANTIVE FOCUSES: HOUSING, HOME, AND RESIDENCE

The cases of urban studies and social administration suggest that both in different ways have the potential to develop conceptualised dimension-based approaches to the respective subjects. Of the two, social administration is the most promising and is in some ways more relevant as a model for the conceptual development of housing studies. The solution of attempting to develop a disciplinary focus in terms of the interface between space and society, which may well work for regional studies, is clearly inappropriate in the case of housing studies. ‘Housing’ is a substantive focus—a focus upon dwellings; it is not one pole of a dichotomous concept, as is an urban focus, and so cannot be integrated with a polar opposite in the way that urban and rural dimensions can be combined to create a socio-spatial regional dimension. It would seem more appropriate to develop a conceptual basis for housing by refining the concept of housing in a parallel manner to the refinement that has been taking place of the concept of welfare in social administration. How might this be done?

Housing studies is clearly about housing. But this tells us little. Housing, after all, in its simplest and crudest sense, is the bricks and mortar or other building materials that comprise the constructions within which people live. But as a field within the social sciences, housing research equally clearly involves the examination of the social, economical, political and other relationships that centre on housing. We might, therefore, by way of providing a starting point, provisionally define housing studies as the study of the social, political, economic, cultural and other institutions and relationships that constitute the provision and utilisation of dwellings.

This amounts to conceptualising housing in terms of that dimension of society concerned with ‘shelter’, as is sometimes done (Abrams, 1964). Such an approach would define housing studies as the focus for the social relations that directly and indirectly involve the activities of planning, constructing, managing, and use of shelter. Yet this is hardly satisfactory since housing is so much more than shelter. Indeed, it is the very narrowness of a ‘bricks and mortar’ approach to housing that needs to be avoided. It is no coincidence that housing studies is so called. It reflects the planning and social administrative origins of the field, and it is precisely this focus that needs to be modified, or at least broadened.

There is clearly dissatisfaction with the focus of housing studies. One attempt to broaden the scope of housing studies has been that of Saunders and Williams (1988) who want to redefine housing issues in terms of ‘the home’, thereby focusing upon the household—rather than the dwelling— and the social processes that are associated with it However, Saunders and Williams’ argument explicitly comprises part of a wider concern to focus upon consumption rather than provision issues. This is a complicating factor in their concern to put the home at the top of a research agenda which has more to do with substantive issues than epistemological ones.

Moreover, the shift in focus away from dwellings and towards the households that inhabit them, which is a consequence of a focus upon the home, avoids rather than resolves the conceptual ambiguities surrounding the relationship between dwelling and household. These ambiguities are reflected in the way in which the words ‘house’ and ‘home’ are often used interchangeably or are closely coupled as in ‘house-and-home’. I have argued elsewhere that the concepts of ‘household’ and ‘dwelling’, basic as they are to housing researchers, are confusing and unclear because they are each defined in part in relation to the other (Kemeny, 1984). This issue lies at the heart of the problem of what constitutes the substantive focus of housing as a research field and is a recurring theme throughout the book.

Focusing upon the home therefore unnecessarily limits the scope of housing research. A broader concern is desirable; one which embraces locational factors and ties housing studies into macro issues of the nature of social structure. If there is any one dimension of social structure that is central to the way in which it is organised, it is housing. Housing comprises such a major aspect of the organisation of daily existence that it very naturally acts as a focus for the study of a large number of social issues, and particularly those relating to comparative social structures. This can be simply illustrated by taking two major dimensions of housing and showing how they affect social structure: the spatial organisation of housing, and the way in which households pay for it

The spatial impact of housing is most clearly demonstrated in terms of the impact of dwelling-type on urban form. It makes an enormous difference, far beyond the narrow issue of shelter, whether urban areas are predominantly made up of detached houses or high-rise flats. The knock-on effects will be major, if not determinant, on, for example, the organisation of urban transport which in turn will affect profoundly patterns of sociability, uses of public and private space, and differential accessibility by such dimensions as age, gender, and class. Other substantive bricks-and-mortar focuses—for example, the way in which school buildings are organised, or the spatial organisation of hospitals and other forms of medical care—also have some impact on social structure but they are much less profound and far reaching than different ways of spatially organising housing.

The other dimension—the economic organisation of housing—is equally far reaching in its consequences. The main way in which this is manifested is in terms of different forms of paying for housing by households. The most obvious and dramatic difference in this respect is that between owner occupation and renting, which, under normal financing arrangements, dramatically affects the manner in which housing costs are paid over the household life-cycle. It is clearly of primary importance to patterns of consumption if housing costs are concentrated at the beginning of the family cycle, as they are in owner occupation, or spread out over the whole cycle fairly evenly, as they are in renting. The organisation of housing finance and the extent of owner occupation in different social groups is therefore of major importance to spending patterns at different ages and among different social groups, as well as having considerable impact on the extent of resistance to taxation.

Both of these dimensions of housing—its major spatial effects on the social organisation of urban areas, and its high cost as a percentage of total household expenditure—combine to give housing a uniquely important place in the analysis of social struct...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Housing and metatheory
• 1 The disciplinary basis of housing studies
• 2 The epistemological grounds of housing studies
• Part II Bringing theory back in
• 3 Returning to the state in housing research
• 4 A critique of unilinealism in comparative housing research
• 5 Housing and comparative welfare research
• Part III Toward a divergence thesis in comparative housing and research
• 6 Ideology and divergent social structures
• 7 Divergent social structures and residence
• 8 The political construction of collective residence
• Part IV Toward a theoretically anchored sociology of housing
• 9 Residence and social structure
• 10 Conclusions
• Notes
• References
• Index