Feminist Epistemologies and the Social Relations of Housing Provision

Abstract

Is research that uses the concept of the social relations of housing provision implicitly centred on men and neglectful of women? In this paper, I look at why this might be the case because of the principles by which the social relations of provision are defined. I look at androcentric bias, referring to principles drawn from feminist epistemologies, and make particular use of some recent work in rural geography and sociology. I then look for evidence of androcentrism in my own work on the social relations of housing provision in rural Scotland. I find my work to have had no deliberate conscious focus on male experiences nor neglect of gendered relations and consider some epistemological and methodological implications of this judgement.

Key Words:

• Androcentrism
• Social relations of housing provision
• Realism
• Feminist epistemology

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my colleague Dr Sharon Wright and the journal’s referees for very helpful comments on this paper. Colleagues at the 2008 conference of the European Network for Housing Research in Dublin also made helpful comment on an earlier draft.

Notes

1. Commonly traced to the work of Berger & Luckmann (1967; see also Delanty 2005). Core to their argument are three points: first, “… specific agglomerations of ‘reality’ and ‘knowledge’ pertain to specific social contexts” (p. 15). Second, “… no part of the institutionalisation of hunting can exist without the particular knowledge that has been socially produced and objectivated with reference to this activity … the same applies to any area of institutionalised conduct” (p. 85). Finally, “… the relationship between knowledge and its social base is a dialectical one, that is, knowledge is a social product and knowledge is a factor in social change” (p. 104).

2. See also Benton (1985) and the debate between Holmwood (2001) and Sayer (2001); I am indebted to an anonymous referee for bringing this to my attention.

3. The position that “… everything is constructed or constituted through our ability to understand and give meaning to objects in the world and other peoples’ actions” (Travers 2004:16).

4. “… the belief that the social world has an objective and independent existence … and can be studied using scientific methods” (Travers 2004:15).

5. Also referred to as the social relations of housing provision.

6. Meaning advance in feminist thought.

7. I am indebted to Mark Vacher for asking this question at a presentation of some of these ideas in summer 2008.