Nominations: An Actor-Network Approach

Abstract

This paper offers an empirical assessment of the potential benefits to housing studies of actor-network theory (ANT). Gabriel & Jacobs' paper in this journal has suggested that certain ‘classic’ sites of housing studies are being re-imagined by studies within the post-social turn. This paper is an empirical study of the nominations process, through which registered social landlords are enrolled into allocating social housing to households prioritised by local authorities on their housing registers. The study draws on three ANT stories—the nominations agreement, monitoring nominations and exclusions—to demonstrate how human and non-human actors interact. In particular, it considers how agreements, numbers, unsurveyed ‘customers’, or boxes on forms, talk, who does the talking and the purposes of such talking. The paper concludes with occasionally sceptical observations about the utility of ANT to housing research.

Keywords:

• Actor-network
• nominations
• allocation
• agreements
• monitoring
• housing need
• social housing
• social theory

Notes

¹ For example, the Housing Corporation defined it in a Circular as “empty homes that are available to let, excluding a reasonable proportion of housing set aside to satisfy internal transfers, decants, mobility and move-on agreements” (HC Circular 02/03, para 3); and as “A vacant property included in the empty property pool to be offered to a local authority for nomination rights. True voids are otherwise known as ‘net’ voids, after netting out properties reserved to the landlord for internal management lets such as internal transfers, emergency transfers and decants during major works” (Housing Corporation, 2006, p. 9).

² As well as that they, the local authority, were having to continue paying for expensive temporary accommodation for these households.