Housing in Britain

Only for a tiny minority of people does the question of how and where they want to live present a real choice and a chance of self-actualisation. The built environment is entangled with questions of social class, age, gender, ethnicity to such a degree that it seems difficult to imagine a field in which social difference and social exclusion could become more manifest. Even 400 years ago, nothing signified people’s status in society and their chances in life as much as the question whether they owned land or property or whether they did not. Over the past twenty years, home ownership in the UK has seriously declined, which has led many commentators to identify a new ‘housing crisis’, but a short glance at the Enclosure Acts of the 18th century, the challenges of post-war regeneration or the widening gap between aspiring home owners and the ‘council estate underclass’ in the Thatcherite 1980s makes it difficult to claim that there could be anything novel about this phenomenon. In fact, the power structures inherent in the housing market and its political regulation suggest that the housing crisis is perpetual.

In this seminar, we will look at a wide range of topics connected to the question of housing in the United Kingdom: from aesthetic and architectural dimensions of buildings, to property laws and building scandals, to the stigma attached to council houses, to recent trends like tiny houses or home security technologies, and to the never-ending problem of homelessness.

We will read and discuss texts by historians, sociologists, architects, politicians, etc., and we will also talk about fictional representations like J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise.

Course requirements will be discussed in the first session.

Personal attendance during the first session is required to maintain enrolment status.
Please direct all your inquiries about vacancies to britlit.fragen.fk15tu-dortmundde.