Book Review: Social Housing across Europe HouardNoemie (Ed.), 2011 Paris: La Documentation Francxaise 368 pp. €20 paperback ISBN 978 2 11 008849 9 paperback

No abstract available

A critical-realist view of housing quality within the post-communist EU states: progressing towards a middle-range explanation

Employing a long-term perspective, we explore whether ideologically rooted quality outcomes of housing provision under communism have persisted during the post-communist construction of housing markets. Drawing on theories of path-dependent change, we hypothesize that patterns of housing quality still reflect past lines of division, namely the Soviet housing model, and the classical and reformist models of the Eastern Bloc. Using a critical-realist approach to housing quality, we relate households’ experiences to key underlying structures; this ontological depth is then operationalized by means of micro- and macro-indicators used as input for hierarchical cluster analyses. Findings support our main hypothesis, yet there is more diversity in households’ experiences than initially assumed. Our study advances a valuable middle-range epistemological frame for understanding the complex social reality of housing and helps shatter the growing view that communist housing systems were all too similar

The diverse economies of housing

This paper questions the uncritical transfer of neoliberal concepts, such as financialisation and overreliance on conceptual dichotomies like formal/informal, as the lenses through which to understand practices of housing provision and consumption in the post-communist space. To this end, it introduces the newlyestablished ‘diverse economies’ framework, which has been used elsewhere to reveal existing and possible alternatives to advanced capitalism. Applied to the Romanian case, the lens of diverse economic practices helps shed light on the ways in which the current housing system was historically constituted, with implications for how housing consumption is now stratified across some related housing typologies. The paper invites debate on the theoretical usefulness of the diverse economies framework to study housing phenomena, particularly its implications for understanding patterns of inequality and poverty, its potential to devise useful analytical categories, and its effect of directing attention to acts of resistance to neoliberal capitalism

The ‘frustrated’ housing aspirations of generation rent

No abstract available

(Un)bounding housing and home: two perspectives

Housing and Home Unbound: Intersections in Economics, Environments and Politics in Australia, edited by Nicole Cook, Aidan Davison, and Louise Crabtree, Abington and New York, Routledge, 2016, 239 pp., £110.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1- 138-94897-6. Thinking on Housing: Words, Memory, Use by Peter King, London and New York, Routledge Focus, 2017, 56 pp., £48.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-138-29384-

The diverse economies of housing

This paper questions the uncritical transfer of neoliberal concepts, such as financialisation and overreliance on conceptual dichotomies like formal/informal, as the lenses through which to understand practices of housing provision and consumption in the post-communist space. To this end, it introduces the newlyestablished ‘diverse economies’ framework, which has been used elsewhere to reveal existing and possible alternatives to advanced capitalism. Applied to the Romanian case, the lens of diverse economic practices helps shed light on the ways in which the current housing system was historically constituted, with implications for how housing consumption is now stratified across some related housing typologies. The paper invites debate on the theoretical usefulness of the diverse economies framework to study housing phenomena, particularly its implications for understanding patterns of inequality and poverty, its potential to devise useful analytical categories, and its effect of directing attention to acts of resistance to neoliberal capitalism

Review of Talja Blokland (2017), Community as Urban Practice

No abstract available

Briefing Paper 3: What "structures of feeling" charge the affective economies of renting in the Majority World?

Reporting the findings of a Critical Interpretative Synthesis of the qualitative academic scholarship on private landlords' and tenants' experiences in the Majority World, this briefing paper asks: What "structures of feeling" charge the affective economies of rental housing? The paper first introduces Raymond Williams' concept of structures of feeling. It then brings together three lines of thoughts to deduce three structures of feeling that are likely to shape landlords' and tenants' (affective) practices: greed and exploitation, ethics of care, and cruel optimism. Findings are briefly presented in the form of a table, based on which six critical observations on how structures of feeling work are presented. A brief conclusion invites housing scholars to engage the concept in housing research. The methodology is presented in the related Briefing Paper One (https://zenodo.org/records/7566096)

Researching Home's Tangible and Intangible Materialities by Photo-Elicitation

Drawing on participant-generated photo-elicitation in telephone interviews conducted with private tenants in Britain, we contribute to a new strand of home literature that engages with the vibrant materiality of things. In particular, the paper reflects on how our innovative methodological approach empowered participants to introduce their own points of view through ‘thick’ descriptions, revealed previously undocumented home practices and enabled researchers’ reflexivity and the co-production of knowledge with participants located miles away. The method powerfully captures home’s tangible and intangible materialities and their importance to wellbeing in ways that words-alone interviews cannot. We conclude by introducing the metaphor of ‘the fold’ and the allegory of ‘the invisible tether’ to reflect on the methodological benefits and substantive findings enabled by our approach. We argue that housing studies can benefit from engaging photo-elicitation in questions spanning from the abstract to the concrete, and from the inside to the outside of the home

Covid-19 and Everyday Tenant Activism

No abstract available