ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the social practice of housing research. It starts with establishing the context for the development of housing research in new universities and considers the role of housing scholarship. The chapter outlines the social relations of contract housing research. It explains that the academic labour process in contract housing research is the result of an interaction of various competing demands an increasingly commercial environment. The chapter concludes by considering the implications of a contract housing research culture. Academic scholarship constitutes what is sometimes termed basic or pure research, comprising experimental or theoretical work to acquire new knowledge. Consultancy research involves the deployment of existing knowledge for the resolution of specific problems by a client, increasingly within a quasi-commercial context. Partnership arrangements between academic institutions and the policy process are demonstrated by largely uncritical discussions of vague and temporally fashionable concepts such as Third Way or stakeholder housing policies, sustainable communities.
