Role of theory in housing research : partial reflections of the work of Jim Kemeny

Jim Kemeny has made a major contribution to housing studies over a long period. Foremost has been his call for and development of the place of theory in housing research. This essay reviews this contribution, although without claiming that the review is comprehensive and exhaustive. The review pursues the question, common to Kemeny’s writings, as to how an engaged housing research agenda can simultaneously be theoretically rich. Four themes or threads to Kemeny’s work are explored: the privatization of housing, the relationships between housing and welfare, the place of power in social relations and the politics of constructionism within the field of housing politics. The essay concludes with a discussion of the possibilities for advancing housing research within a post-structuralist setting and how Kemeny’s works might relate to such a setting. Whatever difference might be observable between these approaches, however, a commonality between them is explored and appraised.