Historical Overview of Theoretically Informed Housing Studies AHURI Postgraduate Symposium 16605 Kat

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Historical Overview of Theoretically Informed
Housing StudiesAHURI Postgraduate Symposium
16/6/05 Kathy Arthurson, UniSA (thanks to Keith
Jacobs for his notes)

• Housing Research Theory
• Why has housing research become more receptive to
  theory?
• Practical constraints
• Key tensions in theoretically informed housing
  research
• Three key texts that have informed housing
  studies
• Theories of knowledge
• Postscript the contribution of economic theory

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1 Housing Research Theory

• Theory is not just an academic luxury, it is the
  means of enabling readers to judge a piece of
  research on its own merits and its own terms, and
  to avoid confusion over just what is being said
  and what its limitations are (Jim Kemeny).

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1 Housing Research Theory

• The best housing scholarship has always embraced
  social theory, for example
• political economy (Merritt, 1979 Ball, 1983
  Maclennan, 1982),
• political science (Dunleavy, 1981), social
  geography (Harvey, 1973, Smith, 1989 Massey,
  1994) and

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1 Housing Research Theory

• sociology (Rex and Moore 1967 Saunders, 1990).
• Also the case that Housing studies dominated by
  a strong presumption that the primary task of
  research is to aid policy prescription.

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2 Why has housing research become more receptive
to theory?

• Theoretically informed housing research seen as a
  way to counteract the dominance of prescriptive
  research.
• A widespread understanding that explicit
  theorising produces better quality research
  outcomes
• An appreciation that housing research cannot be
  undertaken successfully in isolation from wider
  debates taking place in other social science
  disciplines.

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2 Why has housing research become more receptive
to theory?

• The context of housing has altered significantly
• i.e. residualisation of the social rental housing
  stock
• transformation of the welfare state accentuated
  by globalisation processes

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3 Practical constraints

• Funding and commissioning of housing research
  favours prescriptive policy orientated outcomes
• specific demands of contract research pressure
  to generate income from consultancies has stifled
  opportunities to conduct critically orientated
  research.
• Consultancies that housing academics engage in
  focus on improving housing practice but limit the
  scope for explicit theory.

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4 Key tensions in theoretically informed housing
research

• Analysis versus Prescription
• Should distinguish between approaches
• Those specifically attempting to interpret
  understand housing policy
• Those written from the perspective of addressing
  the limitations of policy.

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4 Key tensions in theoretically informed housing
research

• What is a social problem?
• The most popular view of housing policy portrays
  the state as benevolent
• Its overriding objective is to ameliorate the
  conditions of those most in housing need seek
  out solutions to housing problems

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4 Key tensions in theoretically informed housing
research

• Construction of housing policy as initiatives,
  which Governments undertake, is an unwieldy model
  in which to interpret significant changes that
  have taken place

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4 Key tensions in theoretically informed housing
research

• Structure v agency
• Key question What is the appropriate framework
  to analyse social and political change?
• Main approaches
• Structuralist- stresses relationship between
  housing outcomes and the wider economy and
  rejects individualistic interpretations

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4. Key tensions in theoretically informed housing
research

• Agency - (influenced by Weber) primacy of the
  individual, (urban managerialism i.e. the work
  of Ray Pahl Rex and Moore, 1967 Saunders,
  1990)
• Consolidating approaches
• Structuration theory (Giddens)
• Habitus (Bourdieu)

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4. Key tensions in theoretically informed housing
research

• Understanding the role of the state and the
  market.
• No study of housing can be carried out without a
  considerable part of the discussion being devoted
  to an analysis of the state and its direct and
  indirect influence on the provision and
  consumption of housing (Kemeny, 192 37)

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4. Key tensions in theoretically informed housing
research

• Issues
• Defining the state
• The role of the state
• Strong state vs. weak state
• Changes in the role of the state
• Links between the state and policy-making

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5 Three key texts that have informed housing
studies

• 1.Housing Social Theory (1992) Jim Kemeny
• Housing research is under-theorised
• Tendency for housing researchers to engage in
  epistemic drift
• Critical of what he terms unilinearism and
  convergence tendencies

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5 Three key texts that have informed housing
studies

• For Kemeny, these tendencies are flawed as they
  ignore divergence and differences within
  localities.
• 2. Housing Economic Power (1983) Michael
  Ball
• Best viewed as a critique of research that
  focuses on the consumption of housing needs of
  consumers

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5 Three key texts that have informed housing
studies

• The importance of Balls work is to bring
  attention to the impact of production and supply
  on housing policy
• The analysis of policy should take into account
  the extent to which state intervention is a
  response to problems of maintaining profitability
  in the construction industry and other parts of
  the private sector involved in supply of housing.

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5 Three key texts that have informed housing
studies

• Balls main criticism of housing research is the
  failure to analyse, in sufficient detail, the
  interest groups and the social relations.
• 3. The constitution of the Home Towards a
  Research Agenda (1988) Housing Studies Vol. 3
  No. 2, Peter Saunders and Peter Williams

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5 Three key texts that have informed housing
studies

• Suggests a new focus for housing research
• Authors argue that need to focus on the home as
  the active and reproduced fusion of household
  and house ....rather than a housing or the
  dwelling itself
• Enables research to emphasise aspects of
  consumption in contrast to processes of
  production.

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5 Three key texts that have informed housing
studies

• Utilising Giddens (1984) notion of locale to
  explicate how social interaction is partly
  constituted by spatial context.
• Criticisms
• Somerville (1989) argues against the analytical
  distinction drawn between consumption and
  production, suggesting that the two are
  inextricably intertwined.
• Gurney (1990) questions the assumption that the
  home can be defined, quantified and be subjected
  to taxonomic generalisations.

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6 Theories of Knowledge

• Positivism (dominant models in policy orientated
  research but tends to be used implicitly)
• Objective external world
• Knowledge through scientific process
• Quantitative methods
• Technical expertise

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6 Theories of Knowledge

• Social Constructionism (influential in recent
  theory- based housing research)
• Study of human conduct should be based on
  understanding (verstehen) - need to grasp the
  subjective consciousness of the participants.
• An interpretative framework (Dilthey, Weber,
  Schutz Berger and Luckmann,)

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6 Theories of Knowledge

• No role for methods of the natural sciences
• Truth is an elusive concept - multiple,
  subjective realities.
• Possibility of plurality of competing goals of
  rival groups within organisations.

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6 Theories of Knowledge

• Shift attention from what people are supposed to
  do to what they actually do.
• Attention to social change.
• Focus on power
• Recognition of impossibility of theory-neutral
  observation

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6 Theories of Knowledge

• Presuppositions behind Social Constructionism
• Knowledge is theory driven
• Impossible to separate researcher (object) from
  subject under investigation
• No separation between theory practice
• Researchers are never objective or value neutral
• Research occurs within community of scholarship

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7 Postscript the contribution of economic theory

• Housing economics is more geography based -
  housing regarded as one element of land use.
  Housing is not seen as a separate discipline
  (Maclennan and Whitehead, 1996).
• Economics as an approach for housing studies has
  become more important in recent years for two
  main reasons.
• Housing is becoming more market orientated.
• Governments want to target resources to most
  needy control social housing expenditure.
  Policy makers look to economists to see how they
  can target their resources more efficiently.

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7 Postscript the contribution of economic theory

• Underlying paradigm - mechanisms of the market
  operate according to certain principles (supply
  demand) and that outcomes can be predicted as a
  result of these market mechanisms.
• Four main approaches.
• Dominant approach (popular in US) focus on
  static, equilibrium outcomes of rational
  residential location choices in competitive
  market based systems.
• The efficiency of housing finance markets and
  especially the capacity of those markets to
  utilise the benefits of regional diversification.
  

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7 Postscript the contribution of economic theory

• Econometric Models of overall housing market
• Focus on notion of market failure impact of
  government policy on housing outcomes partial
  equilibrium model

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Conclusions

• Provided an overview of theoretically informed
  housing studies
• Much of the work to date is developed in a
  positivist framework
• Opportunities for cutting edge work that links
  housing and theory