HSA Special Issue

Housing in “Hard Times”: Marginality, Inequality and Class

Bibliographic Data

ID12633842
AuthorsKirsteen Paton (0000-0002-2292-7427, University of Glasgow, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume30
Issue1
Pages84-100
Publication date2012-05-22
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHousing Theory and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1403-6096 • E-ISSN: 1651-2278
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14036096.2012.683296
OpenAlexW2072366014
LanguageEN
Citations received20
References cited35

This paper reasserts the relationship between class and housing through a sociological exploration of working-class place attachment, against the backdrop of a recession and government “disinvestment” in social housing. These are hard times for housing and harder still if you are working class. Interest in working-class lives within sociological research has declined; meanwhile, place attachment is deemed a middle-class proclivity of “elective belonging”: a source of place-based identity in response to ontological insecurity. I draw from an ethnographic exploration of Partick, Glasgow to demonstrate how working-class residents express strong “elective belonging” in financially and ontologically insecure times yet, paradoxically, their ability to stay physically “fixed” to place is weakened. I argue that working-class place attachment is broadly characterized by strong “elective belonging” and poor “elective fixity”: choice and control over one’s ability to stay fixed within their neighbourhood

Class (philosophy · Economic geography · Economics · Epistemology · Inequality · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Sociology · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Mathematics · Philosophy · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies · Urbanization and City Planning