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Housing Studies, Social Class and Being Towards Dwelling

Housing Studies, Social Class and Being Towards Dwelling. John Flint CRESR, Sheffield Hallam University Housing Studies Association Conference University of York 14-16 April 2010. Outline. Allen and Webb's critiques Housing Research and Working-Class Communities

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Housing Studies, Social Class and Being Towards Dwelling

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  1. Housing Studies, Social Class and Being Towards Dwelling John Flint CRESR, Sheffield Hallam University Housing Studies Association Conference University of York 14-16 April 2010

  2. Outline • Allen and Webb's critiques • Housing Research and Working-Class Communities • A Critique of Relational Frameworks of Housing Consumptions • Conclusions

  3. Introduction "We are always willing to make a saint or a prophet of the educated man who goes into cottages to give a little kindly advice to the uneducated. But the medieval saint or prophet was an uneducated man who walked into grand houses to give a bit of advice to the educated." C.K. Chesterton, 1905 (quoted in Collins, 2004: 277)

  4. Allen and Webb's Critiques • Allen (2008a;2008b; 2009; 2010a); Webb (2010) • Methodological superiority, based on systematic methods, claim for special status and dismissal of residents and 'local' knowledge • Spurious claims and underestimating resident opposition • No fundamental critique and based on rational -scientific identification of public interest • Grounded in academics' middle-class habitus, orientation to housing and own lifestyles

  5. Housing Research and Working- Class Voices • Need for authenticity and legitimisation of marginalised voices (Allen, 2008b: 180; Watt, 2008: 206; Slater, 2006: 749; Martin,2005: 67/86; McCormack, 2009: 410) • Studies are a record of the psychology of wealth and culture brought into contact with poverty (Chesterton, 1905, quoted in Collins, 2004: 77) • Schemes of understanding which are not those of residents themselves (Bourdieu, 1984: 373; Charlesworth, 200: 203) • A phenomenological gap (Martin, 2005: 77)

  6. Interviews • Social sciences ask questions that are different to the questions (or lack of questions) of residents (Allen, 2009: 66) • Habitus based on habituation and embodied technique, not cognition (Charlesworth, 200: 295) • Interviews based on reflexivity and 'reasoned reasons' (Adams, 2006: 515; Callaghan, 2005; Allen, 2009: 66)

  7. Silence and Inarticulacy? 1 "I'm afraid that's too big a question." "Don't know, really I don't." "Oh God, I'm no good at answering questions." Mass-Observation Study of Working Class Housing in the 1940s (quoted in Kynaston, 2008: 40-46)

  8. Silence and Inarticulacy? 2 "I don't even know how to answer that question" "I've got no knowledge of what those estates are like, to me they're just estates, I couldn’t compare them" "I wouldnae say people think about areas in a general way like that, they're no…people dunnae sit and think about what's actually around them, I wouldnae even have thought about it myself if you hadnae asked me if you know what I mean…It's not even an interest until you actually said that to me, it's never been an interest to me." Joseph Rowntree Foundation Study (2007-2010)

  9. Explaining the Gap • Middle-class habitus of academics? (Skeggs, 2004: 54; Charlesworth, 2000: 149; Allen, 2008b: 182) • Social science violates meaning and corrupts phenomena (Allen, 2009: 55; Charlesworth, 2000; 184) • Dismissal of anything that is opaque to social science, but we cannot open up dwelling without destroying it (King, 2008: 12) • Projects of 'retrieving the irretrievable' (Reay, 2005: 912)

  10. Filling the Gap? Academics, along with urban elites "are the only element in the city's life that sees the city as a whole …while to Little Sicily or the world of furnished rooms the city is merely part of the landscape." Zorbaugh (1929: 274; on Chicago) • The issue of muteness, silence and inarticulacy (Charlesworth, 2000: 2-6) • Academics involved in an exercise of 'naming the world' (McCormack, 2009: 396)

  11. Relational Frameworks of Housing Consumption • The need to understand working-class being towards dwelling on its own terms and not in relation to middle-class consumption practices (Allen, 2008a 6/195; 2008b: 182) • Importance of class and studies of middle-class being towards dwelling (Savage et al., 2005; Butler and Robson, 2003; Savage, 2010)

  12. Middle-Class Being Towards Dwelling? • Unimportance of socially cohesive neighbourhoods; construction of a distinctive lifestyle; attachment to symbolic meanings (Savage, 2010; Savage et al., 2005; Martin, 2005) • Middle-class play housing market to defend and secure a class position (Allen, 2008a: 101) • Middle-class mobilise various forms of resource to decipher correct position for them to take and secure it (Allen, 2008a: 7)

  13. The Juxtaposition Such middle-class being in the world is contrasted with the immediacy and utility of a working class experience occurring in the 'thick of everyday lives' and orientated to the practical necessities that govern life and its economy of housing consumption (Charlesworth, Allen, 2008a: 8/ 73; Martin, 2005: 77; Oliver and O'Reilly, 2010: 53).

  14. A Partial 'Naming of the World?' • A misunderstanding of many middle-class individuals' 'being-in the-world' towards housing • Underestimates the sense of immediacy and practicality in housing practices, which are often characterised by the necessity of responding to changing circumstances, the focus on the utility of housing, in terms of size, amenities, location to family and work and connection to home and neighbourhood, rather than its symbolic or aesthetic value or sense of positioning in a space of positions (Flint et al., 2009).

  15. The Middle-Class 'Project of the Self' (Giddens, 1990)? 1 • Over-estimates the sense of distance, freedom, possibilities, wellbeing and knowledge for many middle-class households whose experience of housing, and particularly moving home, is often one of anxiety, urgency, limited resources, and in some cases, crisis. • The concept of the mobile, sovereign individual is largely a myth (Shields, 2008: 716)

  16. The Middle-Class 'Project of the Self?' 2 "The middle-class intelligensia assume that its being- towards-lifestyle is characteristic of the late modern subject per se when, in fact it is particular to the social and economic circumstances in which such a devotion to lifestyle can be reflexively accomplished" (Allen, 2008b: 182) "Knowledge derived from social capital ties and connections allows them [middle-class individuals] to exactly pick out where they want to live within a middle class 'project of the self' which…implies possession of a world that consists of an infinite series of possibilities" (Allen, 2008a: 65).

  17. The Academic Habitus • The attachment to the symbolic meanings of a place is a preoccupation of an elite or academic 'being in the world' (Martin, 2005: 85) • It is academics who conceptualise social classes as occupying 'positions in a space of positions' (Allen, 2009: 73) • It is an academic, rather than necessarily a middle-class, habitus that operates at a distance

  18. Why? • Lack of studies of middle-class identities • Weak empirical underpinnings of comparative studies • Focus on middle-class activity in housing market, juxtaposed to working-class 'in situ' dwelling • Positions in space of positions more relevant for those without a home (allocation and homeless policies) • Immigration and anti-social behaviour: a phenomenological gap for critical gentrification research?

  19. A Second Consequence of the Relational Framework • Symbolic violence and hegemony (Allen, 2008a: 89) • Submerged consciousness and adhesion to the oppressor (McCormack, 2009) • The domination of the dominated that encourages working-class people to have what they do not have, do not want and cannot afford (Allen, 2010a: 27)

  20. The Limits of Symbolic Violence 1 • Many working class households do not aspire to this dominant ideal at all (Allen, 2010a: 27) • Rejection of owner-occupation (Flint et al., 2009) • High levels of satisfaction and ontological security (De Decker and Pannecouke, 2004; Mee, 2007) • Community opposition to HMR and stock transfer

  21. The Limits of Symbolic Violence 2 • Focus on absences, failures and injuries (Strangleman, 2008: 17; Callaghan, 2005) • Focus on visible sites of interaction (education, urban policy) in the work of Bourdieu etc. • Transposed so that class 'troubles the soul and preys on the psyche' (Reay, 2005: 924) • But working class lives often viewed as unproblematic (Stenning, 2008:10) • Importance of other drivers of orientation towards dwelling (family, community etc.). • Landscape (physical, social or psychological) is not solely made in the image of capital or elite power (Martin, 2005: 68)

  22. Conclusions 1 • Important contribution of Allen and Webb • Greater awareness of partiality of 'expert knowledge' (Webb, 2010: 2) and need to make explicit this phenomenological gap (Allen, 2008b: 180) • Misunderstanding primarily arises from an academic- scientific habitus and the very act of undertaking social science rather than the alleged middle-class position of academics.

  23. Conclusions 2 • What is required is an approach which recognises, and is not afraid of, nuance and contradictions in accounts of social class (Stenning, 2008: 17) • Critical researchers are involved in a process of 'naming the world' • Afford equal recognition to the knowledge claims made by others (Allen, 2010b: 6)

  24. Conclusions 3 • Working-class being towards dwelling needs to be understood on its own terms • But a relational framework that juxtaposes a working-class experience of housing with an overly simplified account of middle-class practices misunderstands many individuals' orientation to their home and neighbourhood. • Overstating the extent to which symbolic violence or the hegemony of dominant narratives is actually achieved within working-class communities.

  25. Conclusions 4 • Presenting a particular working class being towards dwelling is a crucial project in its own right • As Davidson (2008: 2402) suggests, nuanced or limited accounts do not diminish the importance of articulating the experience of particular sections of different social classes, or preclude analysis of the injustice of social processes or particular housing policy interventions. In fact, quite the contrary.

  26. References 1 Allen, C (2010a) ‘Housing Research, Housing Policy and the Politics of Dwelling', Housing, Theory and Society, First published on 08 February 2010 (iFirst) Allen, C. (2010b) ‘A Problem of Verification: What Critique Is. And Is Not’, Housing Theory and Society, First published on 20 January 2010 (iFirst) Allen, C. (2009) 'The Fallacy of “Housing Studies” Philosophical Problems of Knowledge and Under-standing in Housing Research’, Housing Theory and Society, 26(1), pp. 53-79. Allen, C. (2008a) Housing Market Renewal and Social Class. London: Routledge. Allen, C. (2008b) ‘Gentrification ‘Research and the Academic Nobility: A Different Class?’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(1), pp. 180-185. Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge. Butler, T. and Robson, G. (2003) London Calling: The Middle Classes and the Re-Making of Inner London. Oxford: Berg. Callaghan, G. (2005) ‘Accessing Habitus: Relating Structure and Agency Through Focus Group Research’, Sociological Research Online, 10(3) http://socresonline.org.uk/10/3/callaghan.html. Charlesworth, S. (2000) A Phenomenology of Working Class Experience. Cambridge: Polity. Chesterton, C. K. (1905) ‘Slum novelists and the slum’ in Heretics, London: Bodley Press Cole, I. and Flint, J. (2007) Housing Affordability, Clearance and Relocation in the Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation/ Chartered Institute of Housing. Collins, M. (2004) The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class. London: Granta Books. Davidson, M. (2008) ‘Spoiled Mixture: Where Does State-led ‘Positive’ Gentrification End?’ Urban Studies, 45(12), pp. 2385- 2405. De Decker, P. and Pannecouke, I. (2004) ‘The creation of the incapable social tenant in Flanders, Belgium. An appraisal’, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 19, 293-309. Flint, J., Ambrose, A., Eadson, W. and Green, S. (2009) Home Truths; Perceptions of the Sheffield Housing Market. Sheffield: Sheffield City Council.

  27. References 2 Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity King, P. (2008) In Dwelling: Implacability, Exclusion and Acceptance. Aldershot: Ashgate. Kynaston, D. (2007) Austerity Britain: 1945-1951. London: Bloomsbury. Lawler, S. (2005) ‘Introduction: Class, Culture and Identity’, Sociology, 39(5), pp. 797- 806. Martin, G.P. (2005) ‘Narratives Great and Small: Neighbourhood Change, Place and Identity in Notting Hill’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29(1), pp. 67-88. Mee, K. (2007) “I Ain’t Been to Heaven Yet? Living Here, This is Heaven to Me”: Public Housing and the Making of Home in Inner Newcastle”, Housing, Theory and Society, 24(3), pp. 207-228. Oliver, C. and O'Reilly, K. (2010) 'A Bourdieusian Analysis of Class and Migration: Habitus and the Individualizing Process', Sociology, 44(1), pp. 49-66. Reay, D. (2005) 'Beyond Consciousness?: The Psychic Landscape of Social Class', Sociology, 39(5), pp. 911-928. Savage, M. (2010) ‘The Politics of Elective Belonging’, Housing, Theory and Society, First published on 08 February 2010 (iFirst) Savage, M., Bagnall, G. and Longhurst, B. J. (2005) Globalisation and Belonging. London: Sage. Shields, R. (2008) 'The Urban Question as Cargo Cult: Opportunities for a New Urban Pedagogy', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(3), pp. 712-718. Slater, T. (2006) ‘The Eviction of Critical Perspectives from Gentrification Research’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30(4), pp. 737-757. Stenning, A. (2008) ‘For Working Class Geographies’, Antipode, pp. 9-14. Strangleman, T. (2008) ‘Sociology, Social Class and New Working Class Studies, Antipode, pp. 15-19. Watt, P. (2008) ‘The Only Class in Town? Gentrification and the Middle-Class Colonization of the City and the Urban Imagination’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(1), pp. 206-211. Webb, D. (2010) ‘Rethinking the Role of Markets in Urban Renewal: The Housing Market Renewal Initiative in England, Housing ,Theory and Society, First published on 04 January 2010 (iFirst)

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