Researching Housing in a Global Context: New Directions in Some Critical Issues

Abstract

Housing varies from society to society. As researchers, we seek to understand these various housing systems and their relations to broader economic, societal and global trends; we seek to identify the interests that drive housing, learn from successful innovations and propose practical innovations. The adequacy of our results depends upon the adequacy of our methods. This paper argues that current methods are no longer adequate to the task of dealing with the complexity of housing in a global context. It examines four critical issues: theory, interdisciplinarity, a scientific approach and making progress through collaboration. In doing so, it proposes a new approach to these issues. It also introduces a new framework for collaborative creativity, Functional Collaboration. This is a set of eight methods that integrates the diversity of current methods. It is a scientific, collaborative, cyclical and global approach oriented to progress in housing.

Key words:

• Housing research
• Theory
• Method
• Science
• Interdisciplinarity
• Functional collaboration
• Bernard Lonergan
• Functional specialties

Notes

1. As indicated below in Section 6 on making progress through collaboration, Foundations is one method among eight different methods that constitute a scientific approach to any field of human endeavour. Answers to foundational questions ground the process of implementing something new. The following discussion draws upon some key discoveries by the renowned Canadian methodologist, philosopher, theologian and economist, Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984). These are outlined in his two seminal works, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1992) and Method in Theology (1990). These discoveries are discussed more fully in a housing research context in Making Progress in Housing: A Framework for Collaborative Research (McNelis 2014).

2. Different philosophical positions – positivists, social constructionists, critical realists etc. – presuppose different answers to these questions, and consequently approach their research differently, using different methods, highlighting different aspects of housing and so, reach different results. Thus, if we are to reach an agreement on the implementation of practical solutions to our housing problems, it is of paramount importance that we resolve the conflicts between these different philosophical positions. “… [foundational] method offers a key to unified science … In harmony with all development is the human mind itself which effects the developments. In unity with all fields, however disparate, is again the human mind that operates in all fields and in radically the same fashion in each. Through the self-knowledge, the self-appropriation, the self-possession that result from making explicit the basic normative pattern of the recurrent and related operations of human cognitional process, it becomes possible to envisage a future in which all workers in all fields can find in [foundational] method common norms, foundations, systematics, and common critical, dialectical, and heuristic procedures.” (Lonergan 1990, 24). Indeed, “… differences on … reality, can be reduced to differences about … , knowledge and objectivity. Differences on … objectivity, can be reduced to differences on … cognitional theory. Finally, differences in cognitional theory can be resolved by bringing to light the contradiction between a mistaken cognitional theory and the actual performance of the mistaken theorist” (Lonergan 1990, 28). This aspiration for a unified science is systematically explored by Bernard Lonergan in Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (Lonergan 1992).

3. The mode of foundational method is forward looking; it seeks to articulate the basis on which we will undertake research in the future. Thus, it proposes a synthesis and new approach to some foundational issues for housing research. On the other hand, foundational method presupposes a critical appreciation of the past and new discoveries in our capacities as researchers. As this article focuses on foundational method, in each section a critical appreciation of the past is only very briefly outlined as a problem or issue that needs to be resolved if we are to move forward. This critical appreciation, referred to below in Section 6 as Dialectic, requires a different method, one which appreciates what has already been achieved and critiques its weaknesses, i.e. the pros and cons of the past. Its purpose is to work out the best of the past. The complexity of this method is illustrated in Lonergan’s outline of the structure of dialectic (1990, 249–250). (See also, the commentary by McShane (2004a, 2004b) and the discussion of Dialectic by McNelis (2014, Chapter 6). Dialectic points to a much larger project of critical analysis, one which is beyond the scope of this article.

4. Theorizing also has a social dimension as we see later in the discussion of Functional Collaboration. It was a discovery of the Greeks culminating in the work of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (Snell 1953). In theorizing, we depend upon and contribute to the work of others. Yet theorizing remains an intimately personal event.

5. Within housing research, examples of analytic frameworks include Peter Ambrose’s Housing Provision Chain model (1991, 1992); Michael Ball and Michael Harloe’s structures of housing provision thesis (Ball 1986, 1998; Ball and Harloe 1992; Ball, Harloe, and Martens 1988); Lennart Lundqvist’s framework on privatization in housing policy (1992); Kath Hulse and Terry Burke’s framework on allocations systems in social housing (2005); and, Sean McNelis’ framework for understanding social housing rents (McNelis 2006; McNelis and Burke 2004).

6. Explanations are often related to why-questions. However, it is important to note that why-questions are ambiguous and, depending upon the context, can anticipate different types of answers. Why is a house, a house? (i) because it consists of certain materials – bricks, timber, concrete etc., (ii) because these materials are ordered in a certain way, (iii) because it was built by a group of people, and (iv) because it meets some purpose that accord with certain interests and motivations. These different answers to a why-question point to different types of causes: material cause, formal cause, efficient cause and final cause. As such, why-questions reflect different types of questions.

7. For an illustration of how these different contexts can relate to one another, see the illustration of a theory of social housing rent in McNelis (2009, 2014) in which distinctions are made between (i) the relevant, significant and essential elements that constitute rent, and (ii) a hierarchy of roles/purposes – financial viability, social housing, a standard of living and an economy – and how they order the particularity of rent.

8. We can also use this heuristic to identity how the current disciplines overlap and intermingle, how some disciplines are actually sub-disciplines, how some disciplines are not relevant in the new configuration and, how our understanding of each discipline radically changes. Indeed, what we mean by technology, economics, politics, cultural and personal studies will change dramatically. For instance, the traditional understanding of economics focuses on the market – the relations between three major entities (households, firms and government) and the role of self-interest in maintaining equilibrium between supply and demand. An alternative view focuses on how two circuits of production (basic and surplus) function together to constitute a standard of living (McNelis 2010).

9. One notable exception is Norman Blaikie (2007). However, as discussed by McNelis (2014, Chapter 3), Blaikie’s treatment of questions is cursory and inadequate.

10. As noted above in the discussion of theory, these four questions distinguish four different understandings of theory.

11. For a more extended discussion of these questions, see McNelis (2014).

12. In comparative housing research, Michael Oxley (2001) has proposed that we divide up the work between four teams with different purposes, explorers, empiricists, theorists and scientists: explorers discover, describe and report on new territories; empiricists “find more facts and collate and organise these facts” (91); theorists “provide ideas to make sense of facts and they may build models and formulate hypotheses” (92); scientists “test hypotheses” (93).