'Engineers of the Human Machine': The Social Practice of Council Housing Management in Glasgow, 1895-1939

Abstract

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.

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