Speculations on the Question: What Is Housing?

Peter King

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000577587
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

This book consists of a single essay that speculates on the question what is housing?, and its opposite question, what is not housing? The essay is organised around two distinct discourses around which housing can be framed. The first, which is the dominant discourse, is what I term policy thinking. This is where housing is seen solely in terms of policy formulation and action. The second discourse is private dwelling, which describes housing in terms of a private space used by households. Private dwelling might be seen as a product of policy, but, in actuality, it precedes policy thinking in being the very purpose of policy. Having made this distinction between policy thinking and private dwelling, and so stated in principle what housing is, the subsequent sections of the essay explore the nature of private dwelling in more detail and so substantiate the distinction between the two forms of discourse.

Speculations on the Question: What Is Housing?

DOI: 10.1201/9781003282457-1

The question

The question is: what is housing? From this question there naturally proceeds another: what is not housing?

The basic distinctions I wish to draw here are between inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion, between care for and cares of. I contrast housing as dwelling with housing as policy thinking.

I seek to place a boundary around housing. I undertake my study from inside this boundary, within dwelling, within what I take housing to be.

I choose to leave what is outside – what is not housing – where it lies.

Writing subjectively on the subjective

When we think and write about the use of dwelling, we find that we focus on the actions we undertake and not the object containing them. Dwelling is not an object we hold. It holds us. And, this allows us to look elsewhere. We do not focus on housing when we are using it. We do not spend our time observing and commenting on it, looking at the décor or comparing it with other dwellings. We use the fridge and washbasin and do not look at them as distinct objects every time we approach them. We focus on what matters to us while relying on the utility of the fridge and the washbasin. We can do this because this place and the things in it are just where we expect them to be. These things remain in place. So, when we focus on the use of housing, the last thing we consider is the brick box and certainly not the means we have for accessing it and paying for it. Dwelling only works when we can take all this for granted.

And, this means that when we write about dwelling as it is used, we should likewise expect it – the object – to disappear as we focus on the singularity of our use of what are subsidiary elements to fulfilling our interests. In attending to the use of our dwelling, we lose sight of it as the object that encloses this subjective experience. We stop looking at the dwelling and focus on what we do inside it. When we are using our dwelling, it becomes opaque to our consciousness. Housing is just the background. It is just as necessary – we cannot live without it – but we do not live for it.

We have to take very seriously the fact that the use of dwelling takes place behind closed doors and with the curtains drawn. It is not meant to be observed and reduced to calculation. It is private and only operates when it remains so. To open it up to public scrutiny is to destroy what makes dwelling work.

But how then can we think and write about it properly? Can we ever get to the subjective without destroying it? How can we describe what cannot be observed publicly? Perhaps we can never do it fully, and for some, this might mean we should not even try.

However, I want to suggest a way in which we can address the subjective appreciation of dwelling in a manner that retains its essential subjectivity. We can do it simply by focusing on how we – and I mean here the particular thinker and writer – use our dwelling. In other words, the way to properly appreciate the subjective use of dwelling is by describing and analysing how I use my own dwelling and what happens as a result of this use.¹

¹ I can imagine there will be an immediate response to this statement along the lines that this is a white middle-class male view. I want to deal briefly with that objection. Any such statement carries within it the assumptions that simply stating the view that the author belongs to a particular subset of society makes them representative of that group. The effect of this labelling then is to devalue or discredit their argument without having actually to engage with the detail of it. The author is simply guilty of whatever vices that particular subset is prey to. It is assumed that membership of this subset determines one’s thoughts and actions, so allowing identification of membership of that subset to determine the response needed to whatever argument they might put forward. But to hold these two assumptions about members of this sub-set is, of course, to fall foul of these assumptions oneself. How does the reader know the author is typical of this sub-set unless the reader is already carrying within them a set of deterministic presuppositions? Therefore, the proper response to those who insist on pigeonholing an author as representative of a particular set of views is to politely request that they first examine their own prejudices and, having cleared their minds of these, then get on with the business of reading what is there rather than what they presume to be present.

The subjective, so to speak, is not merely within us: we are within it. We can never get outside of it or beyond it. We can either accept the subjective or continue with our delusions. But these delusions do not take us out of the subjective. The subjective focuses on what is meaningful to us rather than what is merely quantifiable. It relates to the specificity of things we use rather than what is general and standardised. It helps us focus on quality rather than merely concerning ourselves with what is measurable. As such, to deny the subjective is to empty the world of all that is meaningful to us. It takes away love, caring, solidarity, altruism, affection and emotion.

In emphasising the subjective, I do not wish to assert that there is no objective world independent of our experience of it. There is an objective world, but we can never experience it as purely objective. There is a tendency to see the subjective and objective as opposites that are mutually exclusive, where being objective means that we reject the subjective. But this is too simplistic. There is a place for a cold and value-free examination of the object world. But we do not want this always or even most of the time. Detached examination should be reserved for particular occasions that call for the disinterested observer. But most of the time, in our relations with others, in the setting of our personal goals and in our relations with things close to us, an entirely or even predominantly objective approach would be counter-productive and even harmful. It is the difference between falling in love with that one particular person and going in search of a mate.

Where the objective dominates, there is a tendency to downgrade those elements of our lives that really matter and carry the greatest weight. We put these at the periphery by focusing on what can be quantified as if the process by which we garner knowledge is more important than the knowledge itself. But in doing so, we tend to forget that subjectivity is the default position for most of us, most of the time. It is the objective gaze that is the aberration from the norm, the oddity. Real life, what we commonly call ‘lived experience’, is subjective. Reality is determined by the subjective. Real life is where we make no attempt to control the variable, perhaps where we do not even recognise that there are variables to control.

But we can go further. We cannot devise a statement on the importance of the objective without relating it to the subjective. Any such statement must ultimately rest on a subjective interpretation, belief or claim based on some thought that either we have had ourselves or taken in and then interpreted. There is simply no way in which we can assert that a belief or thought has been derived objectively. For example, we might suggest that logical positivism, which denies meaning to any question incapable of verification, is itself based on subjective assumptions about the nature of the world and its meaningfulness.

It is fair to say that no one goes so far as to deny the existence of the subjective. What tends to happen though is attempts to control it, limit it and bind it by objective criteria. The subjective can be studied by some externally verifiable means that open it up to measurement. But we might ask, is the decision to control the subjective and rely solely or mainly on objective criteria itself an objective decision? On what basis do we decide on the necessity of the objective? The limits of the objective are determined subjectively and this, of course, means that the limits of the subjective themselves are not objective. This is not to say that our mind is closed off to the external. The point is rather that we can only view the world through a subjective lens.

We presume that the objective is the same for everyone, but we know that facts are often disputed. We know that the apparently objective is not immune to conflict and differing interpretations. This is because we each perceive what we take to be objective very differently. In other words, we view it subjectively.

Indeed, subjectivity is not necessarily distinct from rationality. One can be rational and subjective. We should see rationality as a process – the means by which we determine what action it would be reasonable for us to take. But we start from a particular set of beliefs or reasons, which can be derived either objectively or subjectively. In this regard, rationality can be the tool of our subjectivity. Subjectivity need not be woolly and imprecise. There can be a rigour in self-examination and reflection. We can be hard on ourselves. Indeed, only we can be truly hard on ourselves. We cannot hide things from ourselves in the manner we can from other people.

The difficulty for any subjective approach is that there can be no unmediated external access to the subject. The subjective can only ever be known to that subject. What someone else thinks and feels and so takes as meaningful about their dwelling, or anything else, cannot be known directly by anyone else. This knowledge cannot be transferred without using language (or some other medium such as pictures) and the ability of the subject to articulate what is inside them accurately and correctly (and what possible way have we of determining accuracy and correctness here?). The external observer has to trust what the subject says about the state of their thoughts and feelings and be able to interpret them in a manner that has a high degree of commonality with the subject. We have to know that we both mean the same thing and we can never be sure of this.

Yet we also have to admit that we share the same mental equipment. Each of us is a thinking human subject. We have a self, a mind, a consciousness or whatever we might choose to call it. We are the same in terms of our biology, psychology and brain chemistry and general capacity to learn. In other words, we have similar hardware and software, even if it might operate more or less effectively in each of us. The fact that we can learn language, talk to and understand each other is absolutely fundamental here. We all have similar emotions and anxieties. We show anger, joy, lust and passion, which are all generated internally and which act on us distinctly. No one in this sense is unique and so there is every reason to suggest that we are using the same processes and going through the same operations as everyone else. Admittedly, we can only surmise this, but it is reasonable to do so.

This means that when I write about my subjective experience of dwelling, about what it means to live with those I choose to share my life with, in an enclosed space where all others are excluded, I can have a degree of confidence that it will resonate with others. They may not agree with some or all of my reasoning or my conclusions, but they will be able to recognise, in general terms, the place from which I am arguing. This is because they too occupy a similar subjective space with those they choose to include in their exclusive domain. We can then make comparisons based on this mutual familiarity with private space, even though each private space remains opaque to any external and supposedly objective gaze. This then provides us with the possibility of making statements about how we use dwelling and what it may mean to us. We will not be able to weigh or measure these statements. We can merely compare them with statements and descriptions made by others concerning their private dwelling. But the fact that we all share this common activity of private dwelling makes comparison not only possible but meaningful.

Having established an approach, I now turn to the substantive purpose of this essay. Much of the discussion here is on what I refer to as dwelling. It is an understanding of this concept which will help answer my initial question. But I wish to begin by considering what housing is not, with what I see as the fundamental problem that has to be dealt with before we can fully appreciate what housing is.

Policy thinking

Can we properly study the lack of something without fully appreciating what that something is and does? But this is precisely what the field of academic research commonly called ‘housing studies’ does. Within this field, most of what properly constitutes housing are taken for granted and left largely unanalysed. The field tends only to look at problems and exceptions, at those issues that are outside of the standard experience of housing that most people, including the researchers themselves, currently experience. Looking at a much better-established area of research, it would be like medical students ignoring a typical human body and only studying decayed and damaged corpses on the assumption that this is how the body is supposed to be. We would not study human anatomy using only seriously damaged car crash victims, so why try to understand housing by its exceptions?

What is being studied in the field of housing studies is not housing as such. Rather it is the study of the failure of policy. Accordingly, I refer to this activity as policy thinking to differentiate it from the rest of the work here which concerns itself more properly with what I take housing to be. I wish to insist that we make a clear and thorough distinction between policy thinking, on the one hand, and private dwelling, on the other hand. Indeed, I want to go as far as to suggest that these two areas of study are really looking at completely different things. I can demonstrate this with another comparison. Those who are interested in healthy eating might focus on one of two things. First, they may be concerned with nutrition and what effect certain food groups have on human health and well-being. They study human metabolism and it is affected by certain types of foods. This might extend to looking at the ways in which the consumption of certain food might be encouraged or discouraged. Second, one might be interested in the production and distribution of food and how individual households can access it. In other words, this is the study of food production, supply chains and affordability. Both of these types of study are necessary, but they are also clearly different in the concepts they develop, the manner in which research is undertaken and the types of skills needed by researchers. My argument is that what is called housing studies or housing research is akin to the second type of study. It is akin to analysing supermarket supply chains and considering whether the food sold is affordable to all households. But there is no attempt to look at what impact these products have on those that use them. Housing studies – or more properly, policy thinking – only look at production, distribution and affordability and have no concern for use, for what happens on the other side of the front door. It has developed a number of means of undertaking these studies, but these are of no help to us once we start to analyse what is happening on the other side of the door. Put simply then, policy thinking and private dwelling are completely different subjects and should be seen as such.

Policy thinking is the study of the failure of policy, not housing as such. It studies how the policy process fails, where objectives are missed, and perhaps goes on to try to understand why this might have occurred. However, this thinking does not have anything to do with housing. Housing is not what we are told it is by those who claim expertise in policy thinking. What they are expert in is not housing but policy failure. Housing is purely incidental to this and is merely the quantity that defines the failure of policy.

Of course, why policy fails is important, and it should be studied. But, to reiterate, it is not housing. Policy thinking could be concerned with any area of public policy. It could look at why policies in education, health, aviation or military procurement fail. All these areas use the same basic approach, based on a similar literature and common methods. The aim is to understand the policy process and why it goes wrong. Certainly, policy thinking on housing feels the need for some understanding of housing. It will have to be aware of key terminology, some of the history of provision that has led to this point (in other words, past policy failure), the organisation of institutions and relevant legislation. But the actual techniques of the study of policy failure are not dependent on any specific housing knowledge. Housing could be replaced by aviation without any basic change in the structure or approach of the study.

The problem for policy thinking is precisely that housing works. Generally speaking, housing does what it should, and this means that any study of housing is inevitably the study of private dwelling: the study of comfort, security and complacency (King, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2017a). But this is less dramatic, less unpredictable and less prone to change than the drama around policy failure. It appears to demand merely a description of private dwelling as it is. There is no predetermined necessity to change or reform what happens in private dwelling. We can merely observe what is happening and try to determine its meaning. Such a study is essentially qualitative and, as I have stated above, dependent on a subjective appreciation of how private dwelling might be used. What it does not allow for is a ready prescription for change or any possibility of measurable outcomes. We might further add that private dwelling provides no justification for radicalism (apart, of course, from providing radicals with a comfortable and secure place to hide).

This situation is seemingly unacceptable to policy thinking. It does not wish to focus on what it thinks of as mundane and without consequence. Instead, it chooses to look at two main areas. First, it focuses on quantities, such as the levels of building and finance within a particular domain; the standards of dwellings within this domain (in comparison to the past, other domains or some more abstract measure) and matters of finance, particularly how much would be needed to meet a particular quantity of housing at a given standard. This quantitative thinking might be extended to looking at the levels of income needed by certain groups to gain access to housing of the appropriate standard within the domain. Inevitably, the focus of such studies will be on aggregates – populations or parts thereof, costings and budgets, etc. – and be statistically based allowing for ready measurement of the extent of policy failure (King, 1996). But because it is largely statistical, there will be a tendency to focus on the outliers and exceptions rather than the norms.

This, then, brings us to the second focus of policy thinking. Policy thinking, driven by the quantitative, will tend to focus only on the exceptions. It will look at issues such as homelessness, access and affordability, and light on disasters should they occur. It is always tempting to focus on the exceptions. After all, it is apparently where the problems that need solving are. In comparison, there is the habitual, mundane and ordinary use of private dwelling. Compared to the exceptions and crises identified by policy thinking, ordinary use is apparently incons...