Mary Robertson

(De)constructing the financialised culture of owner-occupation in the UK, with the aid of the 10Cs

ABSTRACT Taking owner-occupation as the quintessential form of financialised housing provision, this paper investigates how housing cultures, understood as a set of shared behaviours and beliefs about housing, have been (re)shaped in the UK in a way that favours owner-occupation, and the implications of this shift for agents’ subjectivities. Utilising the systems of provision/10Cs approach, which takes as its starting point that the norms and meanings associated with homeownership are complex and conditioned by the contradictory interaction of cultural and material factors, the paper shows how the rise of owner-occupation reflected changes in socially shared images and meanings around housing as well as material benefits associated with the tenure. However, the complex analysis of material culture facilitated by the 10Cs reveals that the culture of owner-occupation is not hegemonic. While housing policy since the 1980s has given material and cultural impetus to owner-occupation in Britain, the reflexive and resistive capacities of consumers, when coupled with the competing meanings attached to housing and the growing dysfunctionality of the current housing model, have constrained the dominance of the ethos of owner-occupation and render its future vulnerable.

Introduction to special issue on the material cultures of financialisation

ABSTRACT This paper offers a wide-ranging introduction to the symposium on the material culture of financialisation. It begins by addressing the nature of financialisation itself, drawing on a tight definition in order to distinguish the phenomenon of financialisation from its effects and from the looser associations prevalent within much of the literature such as the presence of credit or even simply (more extensive) monetary relations. In order to locate financialisation within economic and social reproduction, of which material culture is a part, close attention is paid to the distinctive forms of financialisation arising from commodification, commodity form and commodity calculation. The differences in the extent to which, and how, these prevail are addressed through the system of provision approach and its framing of material culture through its use of 10 distinctive attributes of such cultures, known as the 10Cs (Constructed, Construed, Conforming, Commodified, Contextual, Contradictory, Closed, Contested, Collective and Chaotic). The analysis is then illustrated by reference to the papers that follow in this volume which demonstrate the diverse ways in which shifting cultures have served to embed financialisation in our daily lives. The first is on the material culture of financialisation itself and this is followed by a number of case studies that include the promotion of financial literacy and financial inclusion, well-being, the media and finally two sector examples are provided on housing and water.