‘Historical sensibility’ and its relevance for contemporary housing studies

This chapter provides some theoretically minded reflections that might be of interest to housing researchers who wish to incorporate an historical sensibility into their inquiries. It has four objectives. First, to identify the challenges that can arise when housing researchers embark upon their study. Second, to provide commentary on four influential historically minded approaches within the field of housing studies: welfare regimes, path dependency, governmentality, and political economy. Third, to critique some of the ways that contemporary housing researchers writing mainly within the political economy tradition deploy the concept of neoliberalism; and finally, to highlight some insightful examples of recent historically informed housing scholarship.