A View from Housing – Contributions of Housing Research to Social and Behavioural Theory

We invite contributions to the special issue of Critical Housing Analysis entitled

A view from housing – contributions of housing research to social and behavioural theory

edited by Hannu Ruonavaara (University of Turku, Finland).

In a book titled Housing and Social Theory (1992), the famous sociologist of housing, Jim Kemeny, urged housing researchers to “draw more extensively from theories and debates in social sciences and to contribute to such debates with studies of housing” (p. 17). He was thinking of debates that had a broader scope than just housing issues. Arguably housing issues are at the core of many general social issues from new forms of stratification to intergenerational relations.

In the 30 years that have passed from the publication of Kemeny’s book, housing researchers have increasingly drawn inspiration from new theoretical currents in social and behavioural sciences ranging from actor-network theory to practice theory and ‘new materialism’, to take some examples from the sociological side of the field. Housing research has been receiving from general debates and trends but what can it give back in return?

The topic of this special issue is to examine how insights from housing can provide new perspectives to theoretical questions that are broader in scope than just housing. Contributions can be based on findings of theory-relevant empirical research or on theoretical work on housing issues. Contributions are welcome from any field of housing research: economics, political science, psychology, geography, urban planning, philosophy et cetera, as well as from interdisciplinary researchers who do not identify with any of these fields.

Critical Housing Analysis publishes only short papers that undergo double blind peer review by at least two independent experts in the topic of the paper who are not in close working, institutional or personal relations with the author. The contributions to the special issue must be no longer than 3,500 words, including a short abstract and references.

Critical Housing Analysis guarantees that authors are informed of the decision to publish within seven weeks of submission of the paper. The author keeps a right to re-publish the paper in expanded form in a standard academic journal later, but the authorship rights are already protected by unique DOI code from publication with Critical Housing Analysis.

More information on the publisher standards and previous articles published in Critical Housing Analysis are available at https://www.housing-critical.com

Potential contributors should submit an abstract to hanruona@utu.fi by November 30, 2023 at the latest. The deadline for submission of full papers to the Special Issue is May, 2024. The issue (no. 2 of 2024) is planned to be released by October or November 2024.

Full papers should be submitted through https://housing-critical.com/submit-your-paper/ after registration of the corresponding author.