ABSTRACT

In areas of social science that lie outside the borders of economics, the study of consumer behavior reveals a complex web of social, material, political and cultural relationships. For example, the purchase of a house involves preferences, price1 and income, to be sure. But housing is simultaneously a consumption good and an investment with an expectation of future returns. This dual characteristic of housing – that it provides a haven in a heartless world and an asset with which to build up one’s retirement savings – plays upon cross-cutting sets of value orientations that may affect decisions to relocate, remodel and redecorate. Acknowledging that home remodeling returns less than its full value upon resale, McCracken notes, “We invest in our homes … because they are transformation opportunities. We make them to make ourselves … It does not fit very well with our notions of economic man, of ourselves as rational creatures who invest for future profit” (2005: 21). The goal of preserving hearth and home may run afoul of retaining asset value. From the standpoint of economic behavior, home ownership acts as a form of self-imposed liquidity constraint and mortgage payments as a form of forced saving (Thaler 1992). However, beginning in the 1980s, the proliferation of home equity loans helped to re-cast the home as a fungible source of wealth, an asset whose value can be more easily converted into money, which often was not used to improve the value of the asset. Redmond (2007) notes that a shift in value orientation toward a more instrumental view of home ownership accompanied the diffusion of financial instruments, notably home equity financing. But, as Katona might say, the ability to borrow required a willingness to borrow. In this case, the commodity (housing) takes on multiple and, at times, conflicting meanings. The result of this conflict over the meaning of housing has material consequences both for homeowners and financial institutions as well as for neighborhoods and communities, especially dire consequences when asset values are on the decline. Yet, seen from another angle, a house is also a site in which contested gender roles are played out. The home is a primary locus for the provision of, usually unpaid, caring labor (Folbre 1994; 2001). By casting the consumer in the role of an undifferentiated, universal agent responding to a limited set of stimuli in a world of anonymous others, mainstream economics is ill-equipped to provide a satisfactory account of these types of behavior that have had a profound effect on local communities, economies and the environment.