ABSTRACT
This chapter commences with a consideration of the link between everyday life, individual consciousness and the capitalist social order. It analyses the extent and importance of homeownership in capitalist societies. The chapter explores the role of homeownership as a means of incorporation in capitalist societies. Though Britain and the United States are similar, then, in having increasing rates of homeownership they do differ somewhat in the total extent of homeownership and the relationship between income and owner-occupancy. There are two major ways in which homeownership can contribute to practice of the personal life. First, the possession of a house offers a major physical object for use as an indicator of status and source of personal autonomy. Second, the house is an exchange-value insofar as it is a commodity that can be bought and sold. Buying a house is an expensive proposition for most people who undertake it. Yet in capitalist societies in order to obtain use-values one must command exchange-values.
