In a 1997 paper in Urban Studies, Clapham argued that Housing Studies could benefit from an injection of social constructionist research, as previous housing research had been driven by policy-makers. This paper rebuts this argument, demonstrating that such research has been carried out by sociologists of housing in Britain for some 30 years. The paper continues with a detailed example of such research, offering a case study of the housing management of the interwar (1924) Glasgow housing scheme of Hamiltonhill. Marrying constructionist and materialist theoretical perspectives, and drawing upon a wealth of empirical data, the paper demonstrates that the social practice of council housing management in interwar Glasgow was blatantly aimed at the social control of public-sector tenants, and that this social control was firmly located in contemporary class relationships and class ideology. The paper concludes that such a perspective has considerable potential for the analysis of current housing management practice.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abrams, P. (1982) Historical Sociology. Shepton Mallet: Open BookPublishers Ltd.
2.
Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. (1967) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Penguin.
3.
Best, G. (1968) The Scottish Victorian city, VictorianStudies, 2.
4.
Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity.
5.
Breitenbach, E. and Gordon, E. (Eds) (1992) Out of Bounds: Women in Scottish Society 1800-1945. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
6.
Burr, V. (1995) An Introduction to Social Constructionism. London: Routledge.
7.
Butt, J. (1971) Working Class Housing in Glasgow, in: S. D. Chapman (Ed.) The History of Working Class Housing, Newton Abbott: David and Charles.
8.
Byrne, D. (1976) Allocation, the council house ghetto and the political economy of housing, Antipode, 8(March).
9.
Byrne, D. and Damer, S. (1980) The state, the balance of class forces and the provision of working class housing, in: CSE (Ed.) Housing, Construction and the State. London: CSE.
10.
Cdp (Community DevElopment Projects) (1976 ) Whatever Happened to Council Housing ?London: CDP.
11.
Clapham, D. (1987) Trends in housing management, in: J. English and D. Clapham (Eds) Public Housing: Current Trends and Future Developments . London: Croom Helm.
12.
Clapham, D. (1997) The social construction of housing management research, UrbanStudies, 34, pp. 761-774.
13.
Clarke, A. and Cochrane, A. (1998) Social construction of social problems, in E. Saraga (Ed.) Embodying the Social: Constructions of Difference, p. 30. London: Routledge .
14.
Cohen, S. (1979) The punitive city, Contemporary Crisis, 3.
15.
Cohen, S. (1985) Visions of Social Control. Cambridge: Polity Press.
16.
Cdp (Community Development Projects) (1976 ) Whatever Happened to Council Housing ?London: CDP.
17.
Corporation Of Glasgow (various years) Annual Reports of the Medical Officer of Health. Glasgow.
18.
Corporation Of Glasgow (various dates) Minutes . Glasgow.
19.
Corporation Of Glasgow (1920) Report from Divisional Sanitary Inspector, No. 5 Division. February. [This report is in unsorted and uncatalogued boxes of assorted papers from the Environmental Health Department library in the Glasgow City Archives, Mitchell Library.]
20.
Corporation Of Glasgow (1923) The Glasgow Slum Clearance and Rehousing Scheme 1923: Proceedings of Enquiry on 4th, 5th and 6th July 1923. Glasgow: William Hodge and Co. Ltd. [This report is boxed with Corporation of Glasgow (1920).]
21.
Corporation Of Glasgow Housing Department ( 1937) Review of Operations 1919-1937. Glasgow .
22.
Cse (Conference Of Socialist Economists) ( 1975) Political Economy of Housing Workshop: Political Economy and the Housing Question. London: CSE.
23.
Cse (Conference Of Socialist Economists) ( 1976) Political Economy of Housing Workshop: Housing and Class in Britain. London: CSE.
24.
Damer, S. (1972) The Broomloan Road rehousing scheme: a report to the housing manager of Glasgow Corporation. Department of Social Studies, Trinity College, Dublin.
25.
Damer, S. (1974) Wine Alley: the sociology of a dreadful enclosure , Sociological Review, 22. [Reprinted in: P. Wiles (Ed.) ( 1976 ) The New Criminologies: Readings in Crime and Delinquency in Modern Britain, Vol. 2. London : Martin Robertson; and in: S. Berry and H. Whyte (Eds) (1987) Glasgow Observed. Edinburgh : John Donald.
26.
Damer, S. (1976a) Property relations and class relations in Victorian Glasgow. Discussion Papers in Social Research No. 16, Glasgow University.
27.
Damer, S. (1976b) A note on housing allocation, in: CSE (Ed.) Housing and the Class Struggle . London: CSE.
28.
Damer, S. (1980a) Housing, class and state: Glasgow 1885-1919, in: J. Melling (Ed.) Housing, State and Social Policy. London: Croom Helm.
29.
Damer, S. (1980b) Rent strike! The Clydebank rent strike of the 1920s. History Workshop Pamphlet, Clydebank District Library .
30.
Damer, S. (1985) State, local state and local class struggle: the Clydebank rent strike of the 1920s. CURR Discussion Paper No. 22, University of Glasgow.
31.
Damer, S. (1988) Legless in Sfakia: drinking and social practice in western Crete, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 6.
32.
Damer, S. (1989) From Moorepark to 'Wine Alley': The Rise and Fall of a Glasgow Housing Scheme. Edinburgh: University Press.
33.
Damer, S. (1990) Glasgow Going for a Song. London : Lawrence and Wishart.
34.
Damer, S. (1991) A Social History of Glasgow Council Housing, 3 vols. Centre for Housing Research, University of Glasgow.
35.
Damer, S. (1992) 'Last exit to Blackhill:' the stigmatisation of a Glasgow housing scheme. Discussion Paper No. 37, Centre for Housing Research, University of Glasgow.
36.
Damer, S. (1997) Hamiltonhill: the great experiment, The Northender Community Newspaper (Glasgow), No. 64. August.
37.
Damer, S. (1997/98) Farewell to the Wine Alley. Scottish Labour History Review No. 11, pp. 9-11.
38.
Damer, S. and Hartshorne, L. (1991) Peur et sentiment de degout dans les logements sociaux de Glasgow, Déviance et Société, 15.
39.
Damer, S. and Madigan R. (1974) The housing investigator, New Society , 29, No. 618. [Reprinted in: P. Worsley (Ed.) ( 1979) Problems of Modern Society, 2nd edn.] London: Penguin.
40.
Donzelot, J. (1979) The Policing of Families: Welfare versus the State . London: Hutchinson.
41.
English, J. and Clapham, D. (Eds) (1982) Council Housing: Current Trends and Future Developments. London: Croom Helm.
42.
Faley, J. (1990) Up Oor Close: Memories of Domestic Life in Glasgow Tenements 1910-1945. Oxon: Wendlebury .
43.
Foucault, M. (1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison . London: Peregrine.
44.
Gairdner, W.T. (1905) Preface, in: A. K. Chalmers (Ed.) Public Health Administration in Glasgow: a memorial volume of the writings of James Burn Russell, pp. vi-vii. Glasgow : Maclehose.
45.
Gallagher, P. (1982) The ideology of housing management, in J. English and D. Clapham (Eds) Council Housing: Current Trends and Future Developments . London: Croom Helm.
46.
GLAsGOw District Council (nd) Index of Schemes by Housing Act (c. 1970s). Housing Management Department .
47.
Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
48.
Johnstone, C. (1992) The tenants' movement and housing struggles in Glasgow 1945-1990 Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.
49.
Jones, G.S. (1975) OutcastLondon: A Study in the Relationships Between Classes in Victorian Society. London: Peregrine.
50.
MacGregor, Sir A. (1967) Public Health in Glasgow 1905-1946. Edinburgh: E. and S. Livingstone.
51.
McGuckin, A. (1992) Moving stories: working-class women, in: E. Breitenbach and E. Gordon (Eds) Out of Bounds: Women in Scottish Society 1800-1945. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
52.
Mann, J. (1903) Precognition to the Glasgow Municipal Commission on the Housing of the Poor . Edinburgh and Glasgow: William Hodge and Company.
53.
Melling, J. (1980) Housing, Social Policy and the State. London: Croom Helm.
54.
Merrett, S. (1979) State Housing in Britain. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
55.
Mooney, G. (1988) Living on the periphery. Unpublished P.D thesis, University of Glasgow.
56.
Rodger, R. (1989) Housing in Urban Britain 1780-1914. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education.
57.
Russell, J.B. (1905) Public Health in Glasgow: A Memorial Volume of the Writings of James Burn Russell, ed. by A. K. Chalmers.Glasgow: Maclehose .
58.
Saraga, H. (ed.) (1998) Embodying the Social: Constructions of Difference. London: Routledge, for the Open University.
59.
Smart, W. (1902) The housing problem and the municipality. University of Glasgow Free Lectures. Glasgow: N. Adshead and Son.
60.
Sumner, C. (1976) Marxism and deviancy theory, in: P. Wiles (Ed.) The New Criminologies: Readings in Crime and Delinquency in Modern Britain, Vol. II. London: Martin Robertson.
61.
Thompson, E.P. (1981) The politics of theory, in: R. Samuel (Ed.) People's History and Social Theory, p. 403. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
62.
Watson, S., with Austerberry, H. (1986) Housing and Homelessness: A Feminist Perspective. London: Routledge.
63.
Willett, J. and Manheim, R. (Eds) (1976) Bertolt Brecht: Poems. London: Eyre Methuen.
64.
Williams, R. (1977) Marxism and Literature. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
