Housing Pathways: A Post Modern Analytical Framework

Many different frameworks can be used to describe and understand the set of relationships involved in the production, consumption and distribution of housing. This paper is an attempt to put forward one way of looking at what will be termed the housing field. This is not meant to deny the validity or usefulness of other frameworks or to put forward a housing theory, which explains all there is to know about the nature and meaning of housing. The assumption is that any framework offers only a partial insight into any social phenomenon and may obscure as much as it clarifies. Frameworks can be judged on the basis of their internal consistency and on the value of the insights, which they provide which by their very nature, will be contested. The intention of the paper is to review very briefly some common ways of looking at the housing field and to put forward a framework, based on social constructionism, which aims to be internally consistent and relatively comprehensive in its coverage.