Housing Studies, Social Class and Being Towards Dwelling

Abstract

This paper offers a response to the important critiques made by Chris Allen and other scholars of housing research in the fields of housing market renewal and gentrification. The paper begins by responding to the specific interpretation and criticism made by Allen and Webb about a report co‐produced by the author of this paper. It then broadens out its focus to discuss three key themes. Firstly, it explores the distance and conflict in the conceptual frameworks of “being‐in‐the‐world” between housing research and working‐class residents. Secondly, in supporting the argument that housing research needs to understand working‐class housing consumptions on their own terms and not simply in relational terms to middle‐class housing consumptions, this paper suggests that critical researchers themselves continue to use a relational framework that essentializes and generalizes class in housing consumption. Finally, the paper briefly critiques the concept of symbolic violence and class or market hegemony in the constitution of working‐class consciousness and identity.

Key Words:

• Epistemology
• Phenomenology
• Social class
• Housing
• Housing market renewal

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Chris Allen, Ian Cole, Brendan Nevin, Ryan Powell, Tom Slater and David Webb for their comments upon, and discussion of, a previous version of this paper.

Notes

1. The Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder programme was a £500 million capital investment initiative launched in 2003 and envisaged as operating to 2018. The programme, delivered through nine Pathfinders in the north and midlands of England, was aimed at restructuring housing markets in areas of low demand through clearance, renovation and new‐build activities. The demolition of homes and the forced relocation of residents is a controversial element of the programme which has been subject to significant community opposition.

2. This paper represents my personal response to these critiques. It is the prerogative of other researchers, including Ian Cole, to provide their own responses.

3. The complexity of this is indicated by the large scale survey findings of the evaluation of the New Deal for Communities programme from 39 deprived neighbourhoods in England (Beatty, Lawless, Pearson & Wilson 2009). These found that, in 2006, whilst 71% of residents were happy with their area and 82% were happy with their accommodation, 40% of residents wished to leave their area (a proportion unchanged since 2002), with accessing better choice and quality in housing a key driver. Diverse views were also evident in a qualitative study of West Kensington in London that I am currently involved in, where opinions on planned demolition ranged from “This is prime location and they're thinking ‘why do we want the estate people living in there?’” to “I do hope that they knock it down, they were doing a petition, I didn't sign it, I didn't want to sign a petition to keep this estate up and running”. Thus, whilst many working class households are “happy here” (Allen 2010b:27–28), others are not.

4. See Callaghan (2005) for an interesting discussion of the potential for focus groups to capture working‐class forms of habitus.

5. To provide an example, Charlesworth's (2000:57–58) depiction of open plan public houses and Rotherham city centre at the weekend as “not places that one goes to participate in human association” or “without traces of sociability” is a personalized interpretation that will be very different to the views of those using these spaces.

6. The concept of a project of the self being a particularly contemporary development linked to neo‐liberalism and capitalism is in itself incorrect. There were, for example, similar political and social imperatives to act on oneself in Stalin's Soviet Union (see Figes 2007:136).

7. This could also be conceptualized as an example of a phenomenological gap between the focus of critical gentrification research and the lived experiences of those in some neighbourhoods subject to gentrification.

8. The Decent Homes programme involves substantial investment by central government to fund improvements to the social housing stock throughout England in order to bring all dwellings up to a minimum standard by 2010.