Knowing Your Place: The Formation and Sustenance of Class-Based Place Identity

Abstract

This paper argues that the significance of place has for too long been overlooked within housing studies, rarely meriting more consideration than providing a descriptive backdrop. The emphasis on descriptive backdrop is due to place more often being examined and conceptualized in physical terms, rather than as a social construct. Only through understanding how place becomes bonded to a specific class-based identity can the explanatory potential of place be fully realized. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to engage with Bourdieu’s “theory of practice”, as it embraces the different forms of capital, their respective symbolic constructions and how these interplay within his twin notions of “field” and “habitus”. By using Bourdieu’s theoretical framework to analyse empirical data derived from the Scottish city of Stirling, it is possible to reveal just how class-based place identities are constructed and reproduced. Conceptualizing place in such terms can enhance our understanding of social structures, social hierarchies and how the process of social change influences and impacts upon housing. Revealing the processes by which individuals come to “know their place” addresses a long-acknowledged weakness in housing studies.

Key Words:

• Class-based place identity
• Neighbourhood hierarchy
• Stigma
• Bourdieu
• Stirling housing

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the two anonymous referees as well as Julie Brownlie, John Flint, Annette Hastings, Claire Lightowler, Bill Munro and Paul Watt for their critical, considered and constructive comments. Thanks also to Michelle Drumm for proofreading the final version.

Notes

1. Robert Cowane was a local merchant, landlord, banker, politician and ship-owner who made his fortune in the late 16th century by controlled local trade when the town housed one of Scotland’s Royal palaces. His wealth and substantial land holding was left in trust to the town upon his death.