| Issues
of "difference" are on the agenda right across the social sciences, and are encountered
daily by practitioners in policy fields. A central question is how the welfare
state and its institutions respond to impairment, ethnicity and gender. This book
provides an overview of key issues set in the context of housing. Touching on
concerns ranging from minority ethnic housing needs to the housing implications
of domestic violence, this broad-ranging study shows how difference is regulated
in housing. It deploys a theoretical perspective which is applicable to other
aspects of the welfare state, and bridges the agency/structure divide. "Housing,
social policy and difference": brings disability, ethnicity and gender into the
centre of an analysis of housing policies and practices; offers a new approach
to housing, informed by recent theoretical debates about agency, structure and
diversity; develops the ideas of "difference within difference" and "social regulation";
and looks beyond the concerns of postmodernism to create an original account of
difference and structure within the welfare state. The book should be an important
text for students and researchers in housing, social policy, planning, urban studies,
sociology, disability studies, gender studies and ethnic relations. It will also
interest practitioners committed to greater equalities of opportunities and a
fairer society. |
