Between practice, policy and academia: The difficult space of the housing researcher

1. Between practice, policy and academia:The difficult space of the housing researcher Dr Rowland Atkinson UTAS

2. Student: “I’m studying X, what theory should I use?” • Practitioner: • “The last thing we need is more theory, I say just get on with the research” Or: • “I already knew that” or “That is wrong, in my experience Y is the case…” • Policymaker: “What you say is very interesting but what we need is to have practical results that we can use” • Academic: “How can I do policy work that is critical, and engages with theory and explanation in a final report?”

3. When theory meets policy research

4. 1. THEORY

5. Context • Housing research is under-theorised: • ‘Epistemic drift’ and ‘conceptual decomposition’ in the face of policy application • An engagement with policy forces deconceptualisation upon us (Kemeny) • Where do we as housing researchers locate ourselves? • In terms of our social philosophy of research practice • Our mediating role between policy, practice and academia • In debates about the relative centrality of theory

6. A research machine? • Questions selected by policy-makers • Research undertaken by academics in bureaucratic and business-oriented environments • Research serving the function of sealing the closure of policy interventions • Possibilities for innovation and explanation are limited by short-term research horizons

7. Social construction of housing problems • Our engagement with ‘housing’ is guided by the identification of problems • We are not separate from the social world that we study and can act on our object of study • In doing research we are also making an intervention into the social world and potentially changing it • To what extent is the identification of problems the result of: • A sociological imagination, or; • A policymaker-led agenda? • The internalisation of the parameters of key debates?

8. Theory-dependence of observation (Keat and Urry) • An example – Gentrification and household displacement • Explanation of gentrification – • supply/political economic vs demand-side/cultural explanations • Def: the rehabilitation of working-class and derelict housing and the consequent transformation of an area into a middle-class neighbourhood (Smith and Williams, 1986) • Based on these explanations and definitions we are already guided in the operationalisation of the concept and measurement of the social world • So what do we make of new-build gentrification?

9. Guiding frameworks • Grand theory as ‘milieu’ • Examples – ANT, Bourdieu, Foucault, Giddens, Bauman, Castells etc etc • The language of housing research and parameters of debates are affected by these theorists • The function of theory in research may be clouded by branches of theory which are difficult to apply empirically

10. Theory or theorising? • Need to make explicit how we conceptualise our objects of study • Need to make explicit how we interpret and understand phenomena – the idea of ‘commonsense’ erodes these needs • Clear, communicable thinking is essential – anticipating lay responses to theory are important in thinking about its role for housing research: • Understood • Socially meaningful/relevant • Capable of application

11. 2. THEORY AND PRACTICE

12. Theory is for everyone • This includes practitioners who are experts in theorising ‘small’ epistemic domains – the housing estate or patch, the GPs surgery etc • Positions of academics and practitioners is not incommensurable – both use forms of theory as structured understandings of how the world works

13. Practitioner & policymaker theorists • Traditional view is of an a-theoretical group • Yet role of theory in practice is evident: • “Why do these particular groups engage with my services?” • “Why are these people produced by the society around me?” • “Are anti-social tenants born or made?” • “Why do my clients all come from the same kind of area?” • Limitations of this view: • Inductive theory-building may be based on limited contexts • Tends to lack structure and empirical evidence generated by systematic or cross-case insight

14. ‘The attitude to work is different…they don’t have a work ethos and they don’t see the purpose of education and training and that happens more here than other similar schemes [i.e. housing estates] in Glasgow in my professional experience…It’s long-term dependency on the state, it develops an ethos of dependency and an ethos of “why should I do that”? People don’t take responsibility’ (Community Care Worker, Deprived area) Atkinson and Kintrea, 2005 - Practitioner Experiences and Explanations of Area Effects and Life Chances, Sociology.

15. 3. BRINGING BACK THE RESEARCHER

16. The difficult space of the housing researcher • Academic housing researcher: • Addresses multiple audiences • Fundamentally located in a ‘field’ in which there is a primacy attached to theory i.e. the academy • New pressures – RQF, research funding, need for impact, community engagement etc

18. Cycles of investigation and insight

19. Tyranny of the research moment? • Housing researchers need to engage with all three intersections • Short-term engagements may challenge aspects of our role within the academic field • Short-term work may also yield rich cumulative theoretical work • Yet policymakers tend to focus on one dimension of academic research practice

20. Avoiding the envelopes • Our challenge is to: • Avoid epistemic envelopes (discipline based knowledge for other academics, not for social change), and; • Policy envelopes (short term and non-cumulative thinking) • Policy logics are both cumulative and cyclical – ‘big ideas’ may make an impact • Debates about social mix – yes • Affordability and public housing – ?? • In policy research environment process is both formalised and restricted e.g. AHURI and ARC research agendas • Theorising, intuition and broader investigation - criticism (Kemeny) and imagination (Mills) should be our starting points

21. Methodologist (qual and quant principles) Strong theoretical orientation and search for explanation and criticism over description Expert in N areas of empirical enquiry Expert in intersecting/complex research and theoretical literatures crossing disciplinary boundaries – geography, sociology, economics, politics, psychology, social policy On top of current debates operating in lay, practitioner, policy and academic areas A writer/speaker to multiple audiences and at different ‘speeds’ e.g. media (quick/live) - (developmental/slow) Educator – preparation of materials, evaluation of students at multiple levels Engagement with all three research/theory loops Media and policy savvy Domus academicus

22. Some proposals • Social theory is implicitly involved in housing research, whether acknowledged by the researcher or not • Ideas should be made explicit in sympathetic exchange between policy, method and theory savvy researchers and policymakers • Role of housing researcher implies a more advanced and multiple set of skills than that of the ‘ordinary’ academic • The ‘added value’ of academics doing policy work is the long, disinterested and deep view

23. Closing messages • Researchers are located in a difficult space between competing audiences, agendas and targets • Housing researchers work to multiple timeframes - often able to stress the role of theory and insight (academia) and quick/operable messages (policy) • Since theory is about the role of structured explanation our search should be for research (questions and agendas) that facilitates deeper engagement • The ‘under-theorised’ charge probably holds less weight today, yet these tensions (between policy, practice and academia) will probably increase under a climate of increased ‘community’ application, the RQF and market-oriented solutions to public problems