Critical Realism and Housing Research

Julie Lawson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415405492
• eBook ISBN: 9781134706655
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

Since the nineteenth century various housing solutions have evolved, such as sprawling Australian home ownership and compact Dutch social rental housing. This phenomenon cannot be adequately explained with simple descriptions of key events, politics and housing outcomes. Critical Realism and Housing Studies pushes debate forward, arguing that a new ontological perspective is required to address fundamental issues in housing and comparative research.

This book is clearly organized into three parts which:

• evaluate ontological and methodological alternatives for comparative housing research
• provide two historical case studies inspired by critical realist ontology
• compare the causal tendencies that explain diverging housing pathways in Australia and the Netherlands.

Lawson proposes that we turn to critical realism for the solution. From this perspective the causal tendencies of complex, open and structured housing phenomena are highlighted. With this insight we are able to extract the key social arrangements which promote different housing solutions from the historical case studies. Social arrangements which are found to influence alternative pathways in housing history concern the property rights, circuit of savings and investment, as well as labour and welfare relations. As they develop differently over time and space they affect where, when and how housing solutions develop.

1 Introduction

Waiting for the lights to turn on a hot summer afternoon, I look across five lanes of bitumen to the shimmering car park surrounding Chadstone, the cathedral of all shopping centres in suburban Melbourne. Adjacent are a variety of single storey brick veneer homes, set back in leafy green gardens, Venetian blinds drawn. inevitably awaiting demolition with the next wave of retail expansion. Beyond their corrugated roofs, lies a carpet of 1960s suburbia extending to the hazy distant hills some twenty kilometres away. It's green again and I jockey for position amongst my commuting companions.

How different this seems to my other life in the Netherlands, of cycling on a cold wintry morning through the centre of Leiden, weaving amongst the cars to catch the train to Amsterdam and the metro to the University. I overtake congested highways from the comfort of the train, passing numerous, compact towns and villages, of neat uniform houses and high rise flats. Large expanses of green surround them, of fenceless farmland and strategically planted willow trees. How different indeed, but why?

1.1 What's so special about housing?

And so began my journey into comparative housing provision a number of years ago, an adventure which led me to write this book and explore the fascinating terrain of international housing studies. Beyond superficial curiosity, there remain many reasons to embark on academic expedition into this open and underdeveloped field.

Housing is an object that embodies many cross-cutting and complex social, economic and cultural relationships. These relationships underpin and are influenced by the process of producing, allocating and exchanging dwellings as well as the consumption of housing services. In all, housing is a unique and concrete expression of broader social arrangements such as property relations, institutions for saving and borrowing capital and of work and welfare in and beyond the home. Given these differences in broader social relations, housing demands have been answered in a variety of ways to varying degrees of adequacy. Two case studies will examine the generative links between these arrangements and their housing ‘solutions’.

Housing is not only complex and embedded in broader social arrangements but also differs from other goods in important ways. First, there is no substitute for housing, it is essential for adequate living conditions and beyond, for the reproduction of labour power. Second, unlike other items that can be purchased via one-off payment, housing under capitalist conditions is an expensive good and payments must be stretched over time. The high cost of housing relative to income stems from its constituent land, labour and material costs. For this reason, regardless of tenure, long-term credit vehicles and/or taxation arrangements tend to underpin the housing purchases of owner occupants and landlords. Third, time exposes both credit providers and borrowers to risks. Throughout the duration of the mortgage any number of contingencies may intervene threatening repayment capacity. Divorce, sickness, death are all individualised events that can affect capacity to repay. Freeway and airport extensions, rezoning, and other environmental factors may also reduce the value of the property and threaten the security offered by the property's value to credit providers. Risk-reducing mechanisms are often built into mortgage schemes and form part of the architecture of provision.

Despite these important common characteristics, few housing systems are alike. Resting upon the social arrangements of property, capital and labour relations, operating under diverse contingent conditions, different countries have answered their housing question in different ways. The generation of different solutions is the focus of this study, within the broader field of housing studies and the disciplines of social science.

As indicated by the impressions earlier, both forms of provision are fundamentally and observably different. In the Dutch case, social housing has played a significant economic, political and social role for more than a century. In this country, publicly regulated private corporations provide social rental housing to low- and middle-income earners in numerous compact towns and cities. Government-backed loans and more recently direct capital market loans have financed this form of provision. The use and development of land has involved a high degree of municipal intervention, promoting the development of affordable social housing within reach of employment opportunities. Rents levels and increases have been centrally regulated and their payment subsidised. In contrast, social housing is a minor and residual housing option for Australian households in a network of provision dominated by the tenure of home ownership. Property rights are highly commodified and the market is monopolised by private land and construction companies. Until recently a protected circuit of capital regulated the volume of credit available for mortgage finance, which was secured by public mortgage guarantee fund to improve access to credit amongst low- to middle-income purchasers. Today, most Australians live in a small number of sprawling coastal cities. Detached dwellings, with a front and back yard, dominate low-density, land-use segregated and car-dependent residential communities.

1.2 What this book is about

This book contributes towards an explanation of two divergent housing trajectories, which have evolved since the nineteenth century until the end of the twentieth century. Whilst the Australian city has been dominated by sprawling home ownership, the Netherlands provides a contrastive case, where social housing has played a significant role in the development of compact towns and cities. The research focuses upon the historical and spatial definition of postulated generative social relations, namely, those concerning property rights, saving and investment and finally, labour and welfare relations. It aims to test the empirical plausibility of the argument that the contingent definition of these relationships has played a key causal role in the formation, path dependency, crises and reformation of these very different housing solutions. Despite the influential and integral role of these relationships in each structure of housing provision, a combined examination of these interacting relationships has rarely been the focus of comparative housing explanations. This book argues why these relationships are causally significant and offers two tentative geo-historical case studies.

Beyond the substantive, the arguments presented throughout this thesis also concern issues of a methodological nature. The ontology of critical realism is explained and justified, an abductive and retroductive methodology is introduced and a comparative strategy lain forth. Further, previous research examining different housing systems has employed a range of ontological approaches and notions of causality and these are critically reviewed in this book. A conceptual argument is provided concerning the focus and level of comparison. Whilst some readers may consider that the first part of this book is pitched at a relatively high level of abstraction, this does not imply that the arguments contained are of no practical or social significance – on the contrary. For the way we perceive and research social phenomena matters to every day life, as exemplified by the following paragraphs.

1.2.1 ‘Truth’, plausible explanation and utility

First, the goal of realist research is explanation – utilising a comprehensive and defensible conception of what is real and compatible modes of reasoning, with the goal of revealing empirically feasible explanatory causal mechanisms. Unlike other scientific approaches, realism not only acknowledges the existence of socially constructed experience (multiple meanings, actors’ interpretations), but also actual physical and non-physical conditions, actual events and influential social relations (such as organisational hierarchy, tenancy, employee relations – regardless of actor consciousness). Further, it uses specific modes of inference to abstract the necessary and contingent relations of explanatory relevance from other accidental circumstances via intensive case study research, using contrastive questioning and counterfactual thinking.

Since the postmodernist (PM) turn in social science, some researchers¹ consider the search for truth as unfashionable, egotistical and even undesirable. Multiple interpretations are given equal merit and the supposedly objective researcher is unable to make judgements of their relative explanatory value. Critical realist researchers are disturbed by the ‘modest’ relativism of the PM critique. They are critical of both lay thought and action and, where these and resulting actions are falsely based, consider that such ‘beliefs and actions should be changed’ (Sayer, 2000: 19). Further, realists maintain strong criticisms of the apparent ethical neutrality of some PM research: its restrained contribution to real social knowledge and apparent lack of concern for contributing towards answers to identified social problems.

Conversely, critical realists are openly committed to and strive for progress in explanation. This naturally implies a commitment to seek the truth that can explain social phenomena. Nevertheless, they remain modest about reaching such truth goals and use conditional adjectives, such as partial, fallible and contestable, to describe their conclusions. In sum, critical realists endeavour to provide empirically feasible and competitive explanations for phenomena of social relevance and concern.

In this study, the concept of truth is a very humble and fallible one. Applying an explicit ontology and using a defensible set of ideas and concepts, two cases concerning the development of housing systems in Australia and the Netherlands are reexamined via a process of abduction and retroduction. This process aims to offer tentative, contestable explanations for further research and development.

Explanations for disturbing social problems such as racial conflict, drug abuse or homelessness are not an end in themselves. Rather, plausible explanations provide an important stepping stone for sound and feasible strategies for action. If one can better understand the processes generating social problems, such as those mentioned earlier, it is surely appropriate to argue for more relevant strategies addressing the generative causes rather than merely tempering the symptoms. Certainly, such action transfers the researcher into an explicitly normative and political world, yet for critical realists this is no unholy alliance with non-science. It demands conscientious commitment to a clear and justified standpoint based on normative theory. For this second reason the term ‘critical’ is often coupled with realism.²

The ethical or normative standpoint of this book is rather straightforward and comes to the fore in the final chapter. It embraces a concern for social equity³ (as distinct notions of freedom or choice) and a desire for a more just city (Fainstein, 2000) as revealed by the distribution of housing-related risks (inappropriate, insecure, unaffordable housing) across a spectrum of household types and incomes. These risks emanate from dynamic relations underpinning shifting modes of housing provision, as illustrated by the case study research. Following historical analysis, Chapter 8 highlights how certain tendencies are influencing the allocation of these risks. Real risks are concentrated amongst those households with fewer and less secure monetary resources, and have emerged from important changes affecting property, savings and investment and labour and welfare relations. For this reason, policy makers concerned about the distribution of risks amongst society's households must address the cumulative influence of any changes to these key relations. Once again, it is neither sufficient nor effective to be concerned about the symptoms of housing problems without appreciating the generative causes.

1.2.2 Generalisation and abstraction

In addition to the positions taken earlier concerning the notion of reality, fallible truth and normative stance, is yet another important argument of realist approach to science. This stance concerns universality and generalisation. Until the 1980s, notions of objectivity were highly valued amongst social sciences such as economics, political science and sociology, facilitating grand theories, validated by findings of similar patterns promoting universal conclusions. Studies emphasising the subjective, unique or dissimilar were of little importance. The tide has since partially turned, drawn back by a range of arguments emanating from academic movements such as postmodernism, critical realism and institutional economics. It is no longer adequate to merely recite Marx's laws of capitalism, any more than the mantra of neo-classical economics, to explain real social issues.

Realists have been amongst this vanguard, criticising traditional research benchmarks such as breadth, sample size and representation. For them, generalisation is not about empirical regularities. Given their commitment to search for generative causes amongst structured, complex and open social phenomena, realists promote the use of intensive case study methods rather than extensive searches for statistical correlations amongst multiple cases. For any explanation to be reached, the historical evolution of both necessary and contingent relations and their packaging must be plausibly conceptualised, empirically tested and revised.

The concept of generalisation has recently become a hot topic in critical realist discussions. A number of view points have been put forward trying to define the limits of generalisation and related topics’ universality and prediction (see, Næss 2004, forthcoming; Danermark et al., 2002; Sayer, 1982, 1984, 2000). This debate continues today and is best accessed via the Journal of Critical Realism and the Critical Realist discussion groups active on the web.

A vital implication of this study, which compares divergent forms of housing provision, could promote a more sensitive appreciation of the locally defined, but universally relevant, generative relations of property, savings and investment, and welfare and labour in producing different housing options. Every system of housing provision, from tribal settlements to company condominiums, involves some form of these relations. The key is to appreciate how they have been defined and packaged in locally coherent, albeit unstable, ways. Thus, comparison is considered powerful when the reasons for difference are compared rather than event-level outcomes. This concept of comparing causal mechanisms is discussed in Chapter 3 and specifically section 3.6.

Ignoring generative causal mechanisms can be a costly misadventure when introducing new housing policies or programmes. Indeed, too often supra-international organisations fail to appreciate the generative significance of locally defined necessary and contingent relations. The development and implementation of housing programmes by agencies such as the World Bank and UNCHS (Habitat) could be more effective where they incorporate a local appreciation of matters⁴ such as the role of the tribal chief in managing multi-generational land transfers, the methods used by villagers to store collective savings and the cultural and economic norms binding households together. Further, were contingent conditions taken into account, such as the stability of settlements in conflict areas, local experience with money lenders and security of labour conditions, even more relevant and sustainable housing strategies could be developed. For example, unsuccessful home loan programmes in isolated South African settlements overlooked the causal significance of the existing property market and lack of income-generating opportunities. An appreciation of these factors could have avoided the speculative sale of new housing allotments by first recipients, and their migration to squatter settlements on the edge of existing cities in search of an income.

This book contends that geo-historical research, inspired by a critical realist approach and mode of reasoning, can promote a more comprehensive appreciation of housing problems. Yet beyond this ontological and epistemological foundation, equal significance must go to an adequate conceptualisation of the phenomenon itself, as endeavoured in Chapters 4 to 8.

1.3 Key debates and sources of inspiration

Important issues that had to be addressed in this study included: what was the nature of housing provision in each case, what were its essential features, dynamics and dependencies, and how has change in provision been brought about?

Big questions and given the complex nature of housing provision as an object of study, no one discipline can provide all the conceptual apparatus required to investigate and explain them. With this in mind preparatory research has purposefully crossed academic boundaries and inter-disciplinarianism has been embraced. To some degree the book is sympathetic to the call for post-disciplinary research whose primary focus is defined by the object of study itself. Thus, whilst formerly a student of planning and policy studies, I have searched for inspiration amongst the works of urban historians, sociologists, geographers, political scientists and economists. To this end the arguments of Sayer (2000) and Danermark (2002) have been persuasive.

Of course, the research issues pertaining to the object of study relate to much larger debates, which are a...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Critical Realism and Housing Research
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Ontology, methodology and conceptual issues
• PART II Diverging housing solutions: the case study evidence
• PART III Summary and conclusions
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index