Annual Research Committee on Housing and the Built Environment (RC43) Conference 2013

On behalf of the Research Com­mit­tee on Hous­ing and the Built Envi­ron­ment (RC43) the Uni­ver­siteit van Ams­ter­dam (UvA) is kindly invit­ing you to par­tic­i­pate in the RC43 2013 Annual Con­fer­ence to be held July 10 – 12, 2013 in Ams­ter­dam, The Nether­lands. Pre­ced­ing the main event the research com­mit­tee is also organ­is­ing a PhD Stu­dent Pre-​Conference on July 8^th and a sem­i­nar on urban China (July 9^th).

Con­fer­ence Topics

The RC43 encour­ages cross-​disciplinary debate and wel­comes hous­ing research papers from all social sci­ence dis­ci­plines. We invite both panel ses­sions pro­pos­als and indi­vid­ual abstracts related to the fol­low­ing themes:

• The social and cul­tural impli­ca­tions of hous­ing markets
• The polit­i­cal econ­omy of hous­ing and home
• Hous­ing pol­icy responses and the crisis
• Com­par­a­tive con­texts: diver­sity, vari­ety and/​or convergence
• Hous­ing, pol­icy and society
• Fam­ily, hous­ing, and (inter)generational issues
• Cit­i­zen­ship, ex/​inclusion and participation
• The struc­tural crises of hous­ing markets

Con­fer­ence Theme

In con­tem­po­rary soci­eties, the mean­ing and func­tion of the built envi­ron­ment has been trans­formed by the inten­si­fi­ca­tion and grow­ing volatil­ity of cap­i­tal accu­mu­la­tion in hous­ing and real estate.

With sus­tained hous­ing com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion in con­text of declin­ing eco­nomic sta­bil­ity, most house­holds have become ever more sen­si­tive to the sta­tus of their homes as exchange goods and con­sider their respec­tive hous­ing mar­ket posi­tions as cen­tral to their chances of secu­rity or future prosperity.

This con­fer­ence explores the dynamic inter­ac­tion between homes and (hous­ing) mar­kets over time and across dif­fer­ent socio-​economic con­texts. There are var­i­ous ways of think­ing about the idea of ‘being at home’ in this regard. First are the con­nec­tions between homes as places, spaces and objects of fam­ily and social life, as well as hous­ing com­modi­ties that cir­cu­late on, and are sub­ject to, fickle and dis­pas­sion­ate mar­kets. Sec­ond is the sig­nif­i­cance of the shift from pre– to post-​crisis con­di­tions and how the hous­ing mar­ket has been expe­ri­enced in dif­fer­ent cities, regions and coun­tries. In Europe and North Amer­ica, for exam­ple, there is a dis­tinc­tion that not only marks out a fun­da­men­tal eco­nomic reori­en­ta­tion but also cul­tural, socio-​political and even fam­ily and gen­er­a­tional tran­si­tions. In Latin Amer­ica and East Asia by con­trast, hous­ing has not been so inter­wo­ven with recent global eco­nomic crises, albeit with hous­ing com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion still deeply embed­ded with social change.