ABSTRACT
In the introduction to this text we set out the intention of broadening existing debates around issues of housing and wealth. The aim was to broaden the debates in two particular ways. First, to show that in different cultural settings superficially similar processes and relationships can have quite different nuances and implications. A second aim was to broaden the focus of current debates beyond a dominant preoccupation, at least in mainstream housing studies, with the measurement of monetary gains in home ownership. This was to be achieved through drawing on a range of disciplinary perspectives and in consciously linking processes of wealth accumulation in housing to issues such as reciprocity, informal exchange and kinship networks and to demonstrate that changing forms of housing provision had broader sociological implications beyond the potential macro effects on the distribution of personal wealth.
