In this Focus article issue of Housing, Theory and Society, Javier Moreno Zacarés advances an ambitious political economy framework which seeks to analyse the dynamics of capitalist housing provision over the longue durée. Drawing upon contributions from a variety of disciplines and sub-disciplines to produce a stimulating and provocative synthesis, this contribution represents an attempt to understand the tensions and contradictions at the core of capitalist housing regimes, and how these are politically and institutionally mediated through time.
Identifying the linkages between localized strategies of reproduction and broader developmental processes, Moreno Zacarés’ “residential accumulation” framework explores the nexuses between various stages of capitalist housing provision – from production and exchange, through to financing, consumption, and (social) reproduction – underscoring the complex, and often contradictory, interplay between capitalist production and rent extraction. The exploration of these competing forms of capital accumulation through time, and their implications for social property relations more generally, form the locus of the analysis, which conscientiously attends to institutional contingencies.
The present article contributes to a tradition of housing research akin in scale, scope, and ambition to the canonical works of Michael Ball (Citation1983, Citation1988) and Michael Harloe (Citation1985, Citation1995). It does so in a manner which attempts to forge a theoretical “middle ground” (Moreno 2024, this issue), balancing abstract theorizing of system-wide (macro-structural) developments with context-specific (institutional) empirical observations, while taking history seriously (Flanagan and Jacobs Citation2019) and permitting for a degree of conceptual flexibility which, ”can allow us to view housing system development along the lines of broader continua” (Blackwell and Kohl Citation2019). Accordingly, Moreno Zacarés’ “residential accumulation” framework is pitched at a level of historical theoretical abstraction which has become “rather rare” (Ruonavaara Citation2018)) within housing scholarship in recent years.
The article has elicited responses from a broad range of commentators working within the fields of housing economics, economic and human geography, and urban and regional planning. Manuel Aalbers, Michael Ball, Aretousa Bloom, Renee Tapp and Callum Ward all engage in spirited, critical dialogue with Moreno Zacarés’ framework, inviting us to probe deeper into key epistemological and ontological debates within the fields of housing and urban research, geography, sociology, and political economy.
The author and commentators raise the following, key questions, which should be of interest to housing researchers, theoreticians, and practitioners alike: Is it rapacious rentiers who are to blame for worsening housing affordability, or simply a lack of supply, as Ball (Citation2024, this issue) maintains? Do scholars agitating for a political economy of housing (Aalbers and Christophers Citation2014) simply reinvent the wheel which Marxist economic geographers such as David Harvey (and others) have honed over the past decades (Ward 2024, this issue)? Can we construct a general theory of housing provision without it being embedded in specific times and places? (Aalbers 2024, this issue). How should such frameworks be fruitfully operationalized in policy terms? (Tapp 2024, this issue). And, what of the hybrid nature of different logics of property accumulation? (Bloom 2024, this issue).
Beyond these housing-related reflections, the dialogues in this Focus article issue draw our attention to enduring philosophical questions which transcend disciplinary boundaries. Can social systems be studied as predictable, macro-structural entities, whose “lawlike connection[s] can be grasped” (Habermas Citation2005, 312)? Or do such hypothetico-deductive perspectives, leaning on structuralism, assume “far too rigid causal determinism in social life”? (Sewell Citation1992, 142). Is it prudent to confine our understanding of historically embedded social processes solely to “dynamic interactions within specific institutional contexts” (Moreno Zacarés 2024, this issue)? Or does this risk a slide into “blind empirical work with no order to it” (Münch Citation1987, 131)? And, to what extent can these ontological and epistemological divides be productively bridged in order to further our understanding of the evolution of complex social systems in time and space (Giddens Citation1984)?
We thank Javier Moreno Zacarés, and all our invited commentators, for their valuable contributions, and hope that our readers will enjoy this Focus article issue of Housing, Theory and Society.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
References
- Aalbers, M. B., and B. Christophers. 2014. “Centring Housing in Political Economy.” Housing Theory & Society 31 (4): 373–394. https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2014.947082.
- Ball, M. 1983. Housing Policy and Economic Power: The Political Economy of Owner Occupation. London: Routledge.
- Ball, M. 1988. Housing Provision and Comparative Housing Research. London: Routledge.
- Blackwell, T., and S. Kohl. 2019. “Historicizing Housing Typologies: Beyond Welfare State Regimes and Varieties of Residential Capitalism.” Housing Studies 34 (2): 298–318. https://doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2018.1487037.
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- Giddens, A. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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- Münch, R. 1987. “Parsonian Theory Today: In Search of a New Synthesis.” In Social Theory Today, edited by A. Giddens and J. Turner, 116–55. Stanford: Stanford Univeristy Press.
- Ruonavaara, H. 2018. “Theory of Housing, from Housing, About Housing.” Housing Theory & Society 35 (2): 178–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2017.1347103.
- Sewell, W. H., Jr. 1992. “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation.” American Journal of Sociology 98 (1): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1086/229967.