Ethnography and housing studies

Abstract

In recent years we have seen repeated calls for more in‐depth ethnographically styled research in housing studies. This emanates firstly from a general disquiet with structural theory which has dominated housing studies in the 1970s and early 1980s, and secondly from the recognition that the social survey has its limitations, particularly with regard to many contemporary debates and questions. Despite this new interest, there have been few studies and research programmes which have systematically used ethnographic techniques, and this is partly explained by the confusion which surrounds ethnography as a social science method. This paper begins by trying to clear up some of this confusion. It then outlines the various origins of this renewed interest in the importance of ethnography, and shows how it is particularly useful to significant areas of housing studies. It is argued that it should be as routinely used as the social survey: neither as a rival instrument, nor as a means of simply generating illustrative material, but together with it as part of good research methodology. In the second half of this paper some of these issues will be drawn together in an illustration. This draws on some recent fieldwork and is intended not only to highlight how ethnography might be conducted in housing studies and the relevant types of ethnographic data which have a bearing on housing questions, but also, how to identify new questions which penetrate the important social relations of reproduction and change in society.

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