CityReads│Housing Class: Fifty Years On

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Housing Class: Fifty Years On

Housing class is still relevant for understanding contemporary city.

Moore, Robert (2011). 'Forty Four Years of Debate: The Impact of Race, Community and Conflict'. Sociological Research Online,16(3)12

Sources: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/16/3/12.html

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/H/bo28661701.html

Picture source：http://www.daytonarealestatebuyersagent.com/latest-daytona-beach-real-estate-news-fair-housing-gets-fairer/

Race, Community and Conflict by John Rex and Robert Moore was published in 1967 and had a considerable public impact through press and TV. In the ensuing half century the book established itself as a landmark in the field of sociology. Fifty years later it is still widely cited in research on British urban society and 'race relations'. It is used in teaching research methods, theory, urban sociology and 'race relations' to undergraduates. This book proposes and popularizes a key concept, housing class, referring to different urban social groups based on the different ways of access housing in Sparkbrook, Birmingham: owner-occupiers, those buying a house on mortgage, council house tenants, tenants of private landlords, owners of lodging houses and lodging house tenants.

Fifty years later, one of the authors, Robert Moore, brings together contributors from around the world to revisit the themes and issues that were raised by Rex and Moore’s book while incorporating emerging theoretical and policy debates around superdiversity, interculturalism, Islamophobia, political extremism and counterterrorism. It is to be published by The University of Chicago Press.

The following is an excerpt from a self-refection article by Robert Moore published in 2011, Forty Four Years of Debate: The Impact of Race, Community and Conflict.  

Forty four years after publication we need to remind ourselves of some key elements of the book. The Birmingham context is important: the city was drawing in a large labor force not only to staff public services but to sustain the motor-car industry and its extensive supporting industries. Metal-working and other manufacturing industries were therefore in need of labor. Birmingham was also undergoing a period of rapid redevelopment which required large numbers of construction workers, many traditionally supplied by the more impoverished rural areas of the Republic of Ireland. Thus Birmingham was experiencing a major in-migration. At the same time it was engaging in what can only be described as massive slum clearance operations in the inner parts of the city, large tracts of older red-brick terraced houses were being bulldozed, fresh acres of rubble seemed to appear daily. Beyond the pre-war private and council housing estates Birmingham council was building new housing (with many immigrant workers employed in their construction) to rehouse those displaced from nearer the city center. So the supply of housing was diminishing in the center of the city and increasing on the edge. Where were new arrivals to live? The new housing on the periphery was largely denied them, building societies, banks, estate agents, and the local authority all discriminated against immigrants and especially 'colored' immigrants. Discrimination could be overt in the form of advertisements, to covert in the judgements that estate agents made about the suitability of candidates for housing or housing in certain areas, or the assessments that housing officers employed by the council made about the suitability of families from different Commonwealth backgrounds for council accommodation.

The immigrants therefore had to make do with the housing that was found near the city center comprising, firstly, red-brick terraces being held by the city council for demolition or others that had not yet been designated for slum clearance. Secondly just beyond the inner ring of terraced houses were the homes of the old middle class, large houses, perhaps with space for servants, unsuited to the needs and demands of contemporary families who had now moved to modern and more affluent suburbs. These houses, which formed a significant part of the Sparkbrook housing stock, were increasingly broken up into rented rooms, often with shared facilities. The 'lodging house' (today's 'house in multiple occupation') was the destination of many single men, especially those from India, Pakistan and Ireland. A number of men from Pakistan had also found ways to raise sufficient capital to invest in a lodging house; this meant that they and their relatives could live without having to pay rent by maximizing the number of rent-paying tenants in the dwelling. Thus the division between landlord and tenant could also have an ethnic dimension. Commonwealth migrants in Birmingham housed themselves as best they could, but the overcrowded lodging house became a target for the public health and housing authorities. So the city council did not house the city's new migrants but sought to punish them for the housing arrangements they made for themselves.

In this context John Rex and I were very interested in elaborating ideas first developed by the Chicago School of Sociology in the 1930s. We were observing at close quarters the processes of 'invasion and succession' that McKenzie had described. What made the analysis particularly interesting to John Rex and I was that whereas the processes described in Chicago ultimately derived from a free market in land and dwellings, in the UK the allocation of a significant part of the housing stock was controlled by local authorities, whose administrations applied criteria of needs and entitlement. Furthermore, as we have seen, the local authorities were major suppliers of housing through extensive house-building programs and in Birmingham the council were also promoting extensive demolition. The welfare state modified the conflicts described by the Chicago authors in important ways, and created new forms of conflict over urban resources.

Central to our argument was that the segregation, stratification and conflicts seen in Birmingham could in large part be explained by reference to housing 'classes' which derived not from residents' relations to the means of production but to housing. It was evident that people who were outright owners of houses or who had a mortgage on a house, stood in very different relations to 'the means of housing' from a council tenant, a lodging house landlord or a lodging house tenant. Unemployment was at a very low level in Birmingham and the main conflicts appeared to be over access to services and, crucially, to housing. Thus 'housing classes' were a key concept in our attempt to understand and explain the processes we were observing in Sparkbrook.

There was very little response to the invitation to engage with the Chicago School in developing a theoretically grounded understanding of British cities. Perhaps it was thought too 'functionalist' by our contemporaries. Some commentators responded (with some justice) that we were describing a particular city, at a particular stage in its economic development, with a particular mix of housing types. That we were indeed writing about part of a city at one moment in its history might have been a challenge worth taking up. But when it was taken up, the response was not to the way in which we had used the Chicago ecological model of urban change but rather to the differences in labor markets, housing stock and patterns of migration in other British towns and cities.

The ideas we developed on the impact of markets and the other means by which minorities acquiring housing have nevertheless had a long-lasting influence. For example in 2008, forty one years after the publication of Race, Community and Conflict, Cole and Ferrari were writing

“[Rex and Moore] suggested that analyses concerned only with labor market position, economic power and social-class formation needed to incorporate a clearer understanding of how the housing market offered different types of access to ethnic groups, and thus could become a crucial and 'independent' arena of competition and conflict”

On the basis of their own research in Birmingham (including Sparkbrook) they concluded: 40 years on, universalizing prescriptions about housing, community cohesion, cultural preference and patterns of mobility also need a keener sensibility of housing market processes and functions.

One criticism of our analysis was that we seemed to be assuming a unitary urban value system, with a shared desire on the part of residents to move to the suburbs; a 'homes and gardens' drive as Colin Bell described it. Here we may have been rather too closely wedded to the concentric rings of the Chicago model. Whilst is was true that in 1965 many regarded the most desirable residences as being on the suburban fringes of the city, this was not true for all Birmingham residents nor was it an urban universal. Indeed within a few years run down inner city areas were being gentrified by affluent incomers whilst many peripheral areas especially council estates were characterized by relatively high rates of unemployment, physical decline and social revisualization.

It was, however, the debate around 'housing classes' that was to generate continuous discussion into the 1970s and 1980s, with critiques of these developments extending into the 1990s and perhaps to be the most important lasting impact of Race. Community and Conflict. A 1995 PhD thesis by Lyn Hancock showed that the idea of housing classes had generated 28 years of almost continuous debate. Our point of departure for housing class analysis was Max Weber's formulation:

“That we may speak of a 'class' when (1) a number of people have in common a specific causal component of their life chances, insofar as (2) this component is represented exclusively by economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income, and (3) is represented under the conditions of the commodity or labor markets. This is 'class situation' “.

The life chances of people in Sparkbrook had a significant component in the ownership or non-ownership of an important commodity housing. Our critics argued that housing tenure derived from the market, it was an outcome of the resident's position in the labor market. Others pointed out that housing had a use-value and was a form of consumption, not production. But Weber was also quite clear that there were 'property classes' positively or negatively privileged. It is less clear whether it was the income generating potential of property that was critical to his definition.

Peter Saunders was a critic of our work but he pointed to aspects of home ownership that made accumulation possible, for not only did ownership attract state subsidy, it provided a basis for credit and furthermore the value of property could be enhanced by mobilizing to preserve the character of the locality through planning legislation, to conserve the environment and restrict the supply of housing (closure and exclusion). It has to be said that this sounds very much like class-based action. Saunders noted that in his earlier work he had suggested that:

The importance of domestic property ownership as a means of wealth accumulation lay in the fact that the division between owners and non-owners provided a basis for distinct patterns of political alignment. We should consider the ways in which domestic property ownership may be contributing to a restructuring of class relations in advanced capitalist societies.

Our original Sparkbrook analysis was not one of ownership and non-ownership of domestic property but of the variety of ways in which one might acquire housing through a range of market and public routes (some of the former being potentially highly exploitative). We did not go so far as to say that domestic property ownership might restructure class relations deriving from the labor market. Housing classes in Race, Community and Conflict were treated as separate from labor market classes, and although one's position in the former might be related to position in the latter, housing was an autonomous field of conflict. Private landlords and tenants might be in antagonistic relations but just as sections of the working class might come into conflict with one another so owner-occupiers may come into conflict over, for example, planning issues or access to school places. We did not suggest or expect that the housing classes we identified would be homogeneous, or that they would necessarily be in conflict with one another. Furthermore it is common for residents in different tenures to unite for the protection of common or shared interests against perceived threats to their locality.

Saunders rejected the idea of housing classes mainly because: It is confusing and unhelpful to use the same theoretical and conceptual tools to analyze relations constituted in the sphere of production around ownership and control of the means of production, and relations constituted through processes of consumption, even where [..] private ownership of the means of consumption may function as a source of revenue .

Like Rex and Moore, Saunders recognized that 'class is not the only major basis of social cleavage in contemporary capitalist societies'. This was a point of departure for Saunders to develop his theory of consumption classes, in which it was possible to reintroduce the idea of exploitation so that, for example, the most marginalized in society might be exploited both in traditional class terms and in consumption class terms.

This brief excursion into the work of one of our more interesting critics indicates one aspect of the impact of Race, Community and Conflict, namely that it stimulated and contributed to debates in sociology in fields beyond those in which we were originally interested. But whilst the book may have a place in the sociology of consumption nevertheless it was 'the housing classes debate' that continued and occasioned vigorous discussion about social class and perhaps re-focused a number of our colleagues and students on Weberian approaches to sociology at a time when Marx's writing were being rediscovered by younger sociologists. The value of the idea of housing classes to sociological theory, especially class theory, and for the understanding of urban processes and conflicts has been debated for over forty years since Race, Community and Conflict was published.

It is nevertheless important to remember that the book was not only about housing classes. Although this provided a framework for our analysis we were equally interested in the day to day life and social processes of what in Chicago terms was a 'zone of transition' (or to Birmingham city council, a 'twilight zone'). Thus we explored the ethnography of Sparkbrook, talking to people in their homes, in pubs, cafes and places of worship and on the streets. We interacted with many of the people who gathered around the Sparkbrook Association and with the workers based there, we made friends with many local people. We observed the lives of those for whom Sparkbrook was an entry point to 'mainstream' life in the wider city they were on their way 'in and up' in Birmingham. We also came to know people on their way 'down and out' from previous relationships, occupational or residential communities. We engaged with young Irish lads who were forging new Anglo-Irish identities.

We provided an analysis of associations in Sparkbrook and their functions; those that enabled newcomers to find companionship and support and to create something of the old home in a new country. We found football teams that brought men from Caribbean islands together, Saturday schools that taught children their parents' language and the Mosques, Gurdwaras, Pentecostal churches, shops, banks and travel agents that provided the social and economic basis for an immigrant 'colony' in Birmingham. We observed also the churches in which the 'old' residents of Sparkbrook came together to re-create and celebrate a way of life that they saw passing. The characters we met and the associations we observed would have been familiar types to the Chicago researchers.

It is hard to write about the impact of one's own work without either boasting or false modesty. It is nevertheless clear that Race, Community and Conflict had a significant impact upon opinion-formers and thereby influenced legislation to outlaw discrimination in housing. This, in turn, stimulated debates in the public sector about housing policy and administration, and especially 'race' and housing, for many years. Reference is made to Race, Community and Conflict in books and reports published in the early 21st century when patterns of distribution of minority populations are discussed. The book also stimulated debates about social class and sociological theory. Most importantly it introduced (or re-introduced) a theoretical framework within which to understand the complex processes that were taking place in cities experiencing in-migration and how patterns of 'race relations' developed in response to, or as part of, these processes. The book combined structural analysis, firmly rooted in the sociological traditions of the Chicago School and Weberian theory with personal observation and interviews with local actors which provided, in Hall's words, a '"way of seeing and understanding" the situations and processes' of race relations in a major city.

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