Housing, social policy and difference: Disability, ethnicity, gender and housing (SPESH) - Softcover

"... an exceptionally well written and thoughtful book, successfully pulling together for discussion a variety of exclusionary experiences." Housing Studies "... impressive in both its contribution to the theoretical debate and its analysis of the developments in the housing context in the UK and the issues facing policy makers and practitioners." HSA Newsletter "The book amply succeeds in its aim of showing the extent of 'difference' in housing. No one could fail to be impressed by the wealth of evidence that Harrison cites in this regard ... The chapters on social regulation in housing, disability and race deal impressively, and in a most scholarly fashion, with a vast amount of material, and constitute valuable and up-to-date reviews of these topics for housing and social policy students." HSA Newsletter "A new and valuable contribution to the development of theory and its application in specific areas of social diversity and housing. The awareness of the literature and the very wide range of sources is a particular strength." Stuart Cameron, Senior Lecturer in Planning, University of Newcastle "

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 invaluable 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 distinctive 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'; looks beyond the concerns of postmodernism to create an original account of difference and structure within the welfare state. The book will 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.