Thinking relationally about housing and home

In 2008, in Housing Studies, Gabriel & Jacobs (2008) reviewed developments in ‘postsocial’ theory in housing studies. Their article noted the dearth of current literature and aimed to provoke further research and debate. A review of housing research since that date shows relatively little advancement in this field, despite a flourishing of relational thinking in allied disciplines and a small but long-standing engagement with these ideas in housing studies (Budenbender & Golubchikov, € 2017; Cowan et al., 2009; Harris et al., 2020; Lovell & Smith, 2010; Webb, 2012). In urban studies, many pages of the best journals have been dedicated to exploring the networks, relations (Jacobs & Malpas, 2013) and assemblages (McFarlane, 2011) that constitute urban spaces (Simone, 2011; Wachsmuth et al., 2011). This work has produced significant advances in understanding the dynamic nature of policy development and transfer (Baker & McGuirk 2017), processes of urban assembly and city-making (McFarlane, 2011), as well as the more-than-human relationships shaping cities (Franklin, 2017). These efforts have mobilised a range of different relational frameworks, drawing on a diversity of theorists ranging from Bourdieu to Latour, to Deleuze and Guattari, to Wacquant (Harris et al., 2020; Logan, 2017; Lovell & Smith, 2010; Meese et al., 2020; Rogers, 2017).