HSA special issue: housing in “hard times”: marginality, inequality and class

Paton, K. (2013) HSA special issue: housing in “hard times”: marginality, inequality and class. Housing, Theory and Society, 30(1), pp. 84-100. (doi: 10.1080/14036096.2012.683296)

Abstract

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.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Paton, Dr Kirsteen
• Authors: Paton, K.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Sociology Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences
• Journal Name: Housing, Theory and Society
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 1403-6096
• ISSN (Online): 1651-2278
• Published Online: 22 May 2012