In: Marchand, D., Weiss, K., Pol, E. (Direction). 100 Key Concepts in Environmental Psychology. Routledge, 2023, p. 72-73.
The notion of housing designates, in zoology and botany, the spatial area occupied by – and adapted to – an animal or plant species. For geographers, sociologists and ethnologists, this notion covers a system of human settlement within a territory, i.e., the spatial distribution and modes of localization and dissemination of human habitations. Sometimes replaced by the term “milieu”, it has also designated, in sociological works of the beginning of the 20th century, the general housing conditions of a given population.
Anthropology have underlined the passive nature, despite its necessity, of human dwellings’ shelter dimension. It has shown that their spatial distribution, architectural types and devices, interior layout, variations in the use of materials, refer less to a utilitarian conception of the dwelling than to an intention to translate a cultural model of social life. The inhabitant’s goal is to constitute for himself and his group a meaningful and relevant unit within the social space of his culture. As such, houses and housing represent, beyond their capacity to provide shelter, comfort and respite, major facets of material culture, expressing the mentality of the inhabitants, their way of life and their relationship to their environment.
Housing and its multiple sociological, demographic, and economic ramifications are at the center of people’s concerns. As a system of population and territorial devices, it reflects the structure of a social system, carries a heavy ideological weight, and constitutes a significant political issue.
Housing is strongly defined by its territorial anchoring. It raises fundamental issues such as the dwellings’ location and its ramifications in terms of social status (the suburb, the popular vs the affluent neighborhood, etc.), well-being (density of medical services, local services, etc.), comfort and day to day life (schools, sports and cultural facilities, etc.), and social hierarchy. It is built in line with the cultural norms of a given era and heavy socio-economic determinants weigh on it.
Homes are, for their part, strongly defined by their status as shelters and interior spaces, as well as the personal identity and symbolic issues attached to them. As such, they cannot be considered a merchandise like any other. However, they constitute commodities that are at the center of the specific rents and acquisitions markets. They are also considered as heritage assets intimately linked to the concepts of transmission and family histories’ continuity. Charged with both financial and emotional issues, their status is thus made more complex by filiation questions, power relations or rivalry within siblings, and the recognition of each person’s place within their family.
People attach great importance to their home and its environment. They regard as acute and pressing the societal problems attached to the issue of housing, such as its
affordability, residential social diversity, the marginalization of certain groups in so- called “sensitive neighborhoods”, substandard urban buildings, social exclusion, and homelessness. In this regard, recent debates on the poor quality of air and water, or soil pollution in neighborhoods and villages located near sources of pollutants and populated by minorities, advance the concept of environmental racism, which is itself based on the more general ideas of a right to a healthy environment and to environmental justice.
The inhabitants express a growing demand for the resolution of these problems by social actors, and towards the State. Although considerably complicated by the many agents acting on several scales, the issue of housing, because it intimately affects residents, sometimes also mobilizes them during collective actions. Their expectations confirm the historical achievements of defining housing as a public problem. They bear witness to the will to see the role and responsibility of public authorities extended to curb market abuse, promote innovative policies and major state housing programs.
Such programs have, for example, implemented policies for social housing and the founding of new towns which, moreover, contribute to the construction of a specific relationship between inhabitants and their homes. But if these policies’ technical, architectural, urban planning and financial standards affect the inhabitants’ dwelling modes, people also exercise their skills to adapt to and sometimes subvert their dwellings so as not to become, thanks to their place appropriation, strangers to their own living space.
The symbolism of housing accentuates the complexity of its status. This symbolism is expressed in several ways, including, for example, the option in favor of a particular district of residence, urban centrality vs the suburbs, which are an integral part of the social image of the inhabitant. Furthermore, the address of a home situates, confirms and consolidates the dweller’s legitimacy of place within communities, such as the neighborhood, as well as friends, family, cultural or professional networks. Homes establish the relationship of their inhabitant to society. A contrario, a person recognized as “homeless” loses, at the same time as his territorial grounding and his address, the legitimacy of his place within the social group, thus constituting homelessness as the dwelling experience’s ultimate trial.
Within the larger issue of housing, the complexity and significance of the home extend in the inhabitant’s intention, through the relationship he maintains with it, his acts of place appropriation and his modulation of its openness and closure, to transform his living space into a home, thus opening the issues of dwelling, intimacy, interiority, and hospitality.
