Revisiting the Household for Housing Research

Households are routinely adopted as units of analysis in housing-related research. The convergence of intensifying housing commodification with revisions to the social contract in Anglophone liberal market-based economies presents a salient juncture to revisit and reconsider the household, especially given rising and unequivocal expectations that contemporary households will operate as private "shock absorbers". This article reviews conceptualizations and theoretical perspectives on households and draws attention to several "black box" issues. It argues that a relational perspective offers under-exploited opportunities to unlock and refine accounts of the impacts of this current convergence of pressures on households by foregrounding empirically important (shifts in) connections and (social) processes occurring within and between households, as well as across and between the "household sector" and other institutions. It specifies several strands of housing-related research where expanding debates in this way may be particularly productive.