ABSTRACT
This book has drawn on research which has been undertaken in various locations and at various times over more than ten years. And research methods have varied from broad statistical analyses at national level to more detailed qualitative work in local contexts. It would be appealing to call upon some elegant theoretical framework to justify the methodology and the issues addressed but decisions on method have been more typically pragmatic and the theoretical backcloth somewhat eclectic. In the period that the sale of council houses has moved from being a minor and highly localised policy to a major element in the transformation of welfare provision and life chances there have been dramatic shifts in policy, academic discourse and the British social and economic landscape. The points of contact between research on council housing and council house sales, debates in other policy areas and more fundamental theoretical arguments, have changed substantially. The issues addressed in this book, and the way they are addressed, reflect those developments. Moreover, these points of contact have become more numerous as issues of privatisation, social and spatial polarisation and concern about the evident underlying divisions in Britain and other advanced capitalist societies have moved to the centre of the political agenda and become more prominent in the academic literature. And both the physical and social aspects of housing are significant in debates around social and spatial mobility, the distribution of wealth, the domestic division of labour, consumption sector cleavages and the centrality of class in contemporary British society. In that sense, it is hoped that this book contributes on a number of levels.
